Articles by UN
We found 3962 results.
Murder of Brazilian Indigenous Leader a ‘Worrying Symptom’ of Land Invasion
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
29 Jul 2019 – In the wake of the murder of indigenous leader Emrya Wajãpi in Brazil, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, has called on the country’s authorities to “react quickly and decisively” to protect the rights of indigenous peoples on their lands. According to media reports, witnesses saw a number of gold miners enter the protected reserve of the Wajãpi community, then stab their leader to death.
→ read full articleMeanwhile, Around the World
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
The United States in America is a rolling agenda. Dark comes up, women come up, dark women come up–and that is more than the sum of the two. Some US citizens travel the world searching for “the old US” may find the US culture at its best outside the US, as the US Way of Life; liberated from the concerns and the violence of making the US also prevail militarily, economically and politically over all others.
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A Brief History of the CIA’s Dirty War in South Sudan
Thomas C. Mountain | Intrepid Report – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
30 Jul 2019 – With the CIA’s dirty war in South Sudan winding down, it’s time to take a brief but comprehensive look at the origins and history of this most secret of Pax Americana crimes in Africa. It is in the national interests of the USA to deprive China of access to African energy resources, with the Sudanese oil fields being the only Chinese owned and operated in Africa.
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UN Chief Laments Ending of Cold War-Era Disarmament Treaty
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
2 Aug 2019 – Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his “deep regret” today that the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the United States and Russia came to an end.
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The 2019 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index
UN Development Programme – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
11 July 2019 – The 2019 Global MPI data and publication “Illuminating Inequalities” released today shed light on the number of people experiencing poverty at regional, national and subnational levels, and reveal inequalities across countries and among the poor themselves. Jointly developed by the UNDP and the University of Oxford, it offers data for 101 countries, covering 76 percent of the global population.
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A Compliment
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
Really!?
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NSA Whistleblower Speaks about Julian Assange & the ‘Shadow Government’
Arjun Walia | Collective Evolution – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
22 Jul 201 – Longtime high-ranking NSA employee William Binney shares his thoughts on the arrest of Julian Assange and who is really in control.
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Dag Hammarskjöld (29 Jul 1905 – 18 Sep 1961): Second UN Secretary-General
The United Nations – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 10 April 1953 until 18 September 1961 when he died in a plane crash while on a peace mission in the Congo.
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Hong Kong in Decline
Bunn Nagara – The Star [Malaysia],
29 Jul 2019
28 Jul 2019 – For China today Hong Kong is just another Chinese city, meaning it is dispensable. Shenzhen and the rest of the mainland do not need a nettlesome Hong Kong for China’s continued rise. Hong Kong protesters have committed at least a dozen strategic errors.
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Privatization Increases Corruption
Jomo Kwame Sundaram | IPS/Human Wrongs Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
23 Jul 2019 – International financial institutions (IFIs) have typically imposed wide-ranging policy reforms – called ‘conditionalities’ – in exchange for country governments to secure access to financial assistance. IFI policy conditionalities, such as the privatization of state-owned enterprises, can create new rentier opportunities, undermining government will and capacity to curb corruption.
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Merger Mania: The Military-Industrial Complex on Steroids
William D. Hartung - TomDispatch,
22 Jul 2019
16 Jul 2019 – Raytheon, already one of the top five U.S. defense contractors, is planning to merge with United Technologies. That company is a major contractor in its own right, producing, among other things, the engine for the F-35 combat aircraft, the most expensive Pentagon weapons program ever.
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July 1995 Srebrenica Genocide: A Mirror for All Europeans
Dunja Mijatović | Open Democracy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2019
10 Jul 2019 – This happened with the complicity of a passive international community which knew what was happening but chose to look away. It took its final form in deliberate acts intended to destroy a group of people only because they were Muslims – before the unseeing eyes of those who did not feel concerned.
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Debunking the Indo-Pacific Myth
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
9 Jul 2019 – The Trump administration is obsessively spinning the concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”. Apart from a small coterie of scholars, very few people around the world, especially across the Global South, know what that means. Now everything one needs to know – and especially not know – about the Indo-Pacific is contained in a detailed Pentagon report.
→ read full articleAstronaut
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
One of those…
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In Myanmar’s Conflict-Torn Rakhine, Fresh Allegations of ‘War Crimes’
Poppy McPherson and Thu Thu Aung | Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
12 Jul 2019 – When 35-year-old Ah Hla showed up to a police station in western Myanmar in late April hoping to see her husband among the prisoners, she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. “I went there with the hope that I am going to see my husband, but he was not there,” said Ah Hla, who had walked to the police station with a group of relatives of the detained men. When she arrived, police told her that her husband of 15 years had hanged himself in his cell, and that his body had already been disposed of.
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Planetary Condominium: The Legal Framework for the Common Home of Humanity
Paulo Miguel Ferreira Magalhães, et al. | Global Challenges Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
Inspired by the thoughts of Garrett Hardin and Elinor Ostrom the submission proposes to legally recognize the Earth System as Natural Intangible Common Heritage of Humankind and scale-up the legal model of condominiums to the global level: A condominium is an object with a unitary structure and common functional systems, with private rights for determined fractions and, simultaneously, common ownership and governance for common structures and functions. Different legal regimes would be able to coexist. A revived UN Trusteeship Council would be the guardian of the new heritage and others global commons, as well as for addressing global catastrophic risks using the planetary boundaries framework as a guidance system.
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Bangladesh Can Make Myanmar Pay for Crimes against Rohingya
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
8 Jul 2019 – Bangladesh simply lacks the resources to cope with the burden of having to shelter and feed 1.2 million Rohingya genocide survivors. It is also unfair to Dhaka to be left to handle a huge refugee burden alone without adequate financial support from the international community. Dhaka should move International Court of Justice to force Myanmar to pay reparations to for hosting victims of genocide.
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Controlling Deadly Malaria without Chemicals
Jules Bernstein | Univ. of California Riverside – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
28 Jun 2019 – Scientists have finally found malaria’s Achilles’ heel, a neurotoxin that isn’t harmful to any living thing except Anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria.
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In Afghanistan, We Have Three Dreams
Dr Hakim Young and the Afghan Peace Volunteers – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
5 Jul 2019 – In Kabul, our thoughts and feelings are diverse, complicated and flawed, so we centre our three dreams on relationships. We hope that each of us can take tiny actions to free ourselves from the ravages of money and power.
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US Government Tops All for Creating Refugees
Eric Zuesse | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
30 Jun 2019 – This new report from the United Nations proves that America’s regime-change operations have actually created half of the world’s refugees. It proves that America’s penchant for invading and trying to overthrow the governments that its billionaires want to replace (“regime-change”) has been by far the biggest of all single causes of refugees worldwide, vastly higher than any other government.
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Monsters Walk the Earth. Why These Three Countries Are the Real Troika of Evil
Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
27 Jun 2019 – Americans, Saudis and Israelis have become monsters in the eyes of the rest of the world even if in their own minds they are endowed with special privilege due to their being “Exceptional,” “Chosen by God” or “Guardians of Mecca and Medina.” All three countries share a dishonest sense of entitlement that supports the fiction that their oppressive and illegal behavior is somehow perfectly legitimate.
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Reviving Yemen’s Ancient Coffee Legacy: An Opportunity to Facilitate Conflict Transformation and the Empowerment of Traditionally Marginalized Groups
Cameron Casenhiser | Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
The gap between the specialty coffee industry and organizations like the CFG may be closer than one may initially think. If organizations dedicated to promoting peace in conflicted areas, such as Yemen, were to partner with organizations such as ACE, Qima, and Port of Mokhtar, the resilient coffee farming communities may be discovered as not only containing voices of hope, but also as internal resources for developing local peace actors.
→ read full articleDam!
Anonymous/Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
A boy is selling fish on a corner. To get his customers’ attention, he is yelling, “Dam fish for sale! Get your dam fish here!”
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‘Suu Kyi and Virtually the Entire Opposition Were Completely Enamoured with US Power’
Maung Zarni | The Citizen – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2019
24 Jun 2019 – An extended interview with Maung Zarni, an educator and political activist in exile who was closely associated with Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy and erstwhile face of democratic politics in Myanmar. Zarni recalls the hopes many vested in Suu Kyi after her father Aung San was assassinated in 1947, and his own journey towards disillusionment.
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Pictures of Dead Migrants Inspire Our Sympathy. But what Use Is That to Them?
Gary Younge – The Guardian,
1 Jul 2019
The photograph of a drowned Salvadoran migrant and his daughter provoked a global outcry. That’s not enough.
→ read full articleMeanwhile, Around the World
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2019
Transcending Transcend: A New Phase – 1 July 2019: an iconic date. The second half of a calendar year, right after an equinox announcing the second half of the solar year. Time to take stock. And to ‘go beyond, transcend’ to something new. Leaving the old behind? No, taking the old with us into the new.
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Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange
Prof. Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture | Medium – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2019
On the Occasion of the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, 26 June 2019 – This Op-Ed has been offered for publication to the Guardian, The Times, the Financial Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Canberra Times, the Telegraph, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Newsweek. None responded positively.
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Iran Goes for “Maximum Counter-Pressure”
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2019
20 Jun 2019 – Sooner or later the US “maximum pressure” on Iran would inevitably be met by “maximum counter-pressure”. Sparks are ominously bound to fly. As I previously reported, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz would destroy the American economy by detonating the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market; and that would collapse the world banking system, crushing the world’s $80 trillion GDP and causing an unprecedented depression.
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Is Peaceful Research Possible? On the Methodology of Peace Research
Prof. Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2019
The problem to be explored in this paper can be stated very briefly as follows: is peace research necessarily a peaceful activity? More precisely, is there a meaningful distinction between violent and nonviolent methodologies in peace research? And if there is such a distinction, we are immediately led onto more questions: could it be that some methodologies very frequently employed in fact are highly violent?; what would alternative, nonviolent methodologies be like? – and the final, in a sense most fundamental question: does peace research have to be pursued with nonviolent, peaceful methodologies?
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Helen Keller (27 Jun 1880 – 1 Jun 1968)
American Foundation for the Blind – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century’s leading humanitarians, as well as co-founder of the ACLU.
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Costs of War
Watson Institute | Brown University – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
June 2019 – The Costs of War Project is a team of 35 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2011. We use research and a public website to facilitate debate about the costs of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the related violence in Pakistan and Syria. There are many hidden or unacknowledged costs of the United States’ decision to respond to the 9/11 attacks with military force. We aim to foster democratic discussion of these wars by providing the fullest possible account of their human, economic, and political costs, and to foster better informed public policies.
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U.S. Military Consumes More Hydrocarbons than Most Countries — Massive Hidden Impact on Climate
Science Daily | Lancaster University – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
20 Jun 2019 – Research shows the US military is one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries.
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A Brief and Independent Inquiry into the Involvement of the United Nations in Myanmar from 2010 to 2018
UN Diplomat Gert Rosenthal – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
29 May 2019 – It should be noted at the outset that this exercise is being compared by many knowledgeable people in the United Nations and the Human Rights community to the iconic internal review carried out in 2012 on the United Nations’ actions in Sri Lanka by a panel under the leadership of Charles Petrie. In fact, there are many commonalities to events that triggered the Organization’s actions in Sri Lanka from 2007 to 2009 with those observed in Myanmar from 2010 to 2018, as well as to the manner in which different parts of the UN System responded to those events.
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Myanmar: Building Businesses over Killing Fields
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
21 Jun 2019 – Bleak future lies ahead of Rohingya, as Myanmar is getting away with genocide amid UN ‘system failure’. Governments and firms from Canada, U.S., Australia, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands, Spain, France, and Germany are in numerous partnerships with the country. The World Bank’s latest proposal to give Myanmar $100 million in grants is just one of many signs that it has gotten away with genocide.
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Record Displacement Shows ‘We’re Almost Unable to Make Peace’, Warns UN Refugee Agency Chief
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
19 Jun 2019 – A record 70.8 million people fled war, persecution and conflict in 2018, UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi said today, appealing for greater international solidarity to counter the fact that “we have become almost unable to make peace”.
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The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits from Global Violence and War
Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Rountree | Monthly Review – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
The all-pervasive occurrence of violence makes it seem like an unavoidable, and ultimately incomprehensible, aspect of the human world, particularly in a modern era. But, in this detailed and expansive book, Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Rountree demonstrate otherwise. Widespread violence, they argue, is in fact an expression of the underlying social order, and whether it is carried out by military forces or by patterns of investment, the aim is to strengthen that order for the benefit of the powerful.
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Tom Paine, Christianity, and Modern Psychiatry
Bruce E. Levine - CounterPunch,
17 Jun 2019
14 Jun 2019 – Since the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has nothing to do with science, homosexuality could only be eliminated as a DSM illness by political activism in the early 1970s. In that same DSM-III, however, again owning to prejudice and not science, a new mental illness for kids was invented by psychiatry: “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD), the so-called symptoms including “often argues with authority figures” and “often actively defies or refuses to comply with requests from authority figures or with rules.”
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Conflict Prevention, Mediation: Among ‘Most Important Tools’ to Reduce Human Suffering, Guterres Tells Security Council
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2019
12 Jun 2019 – Conflict prevention and mediation are two of “the most important tools at our disposal to reduce human suffering” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council today. “When we act early, and are united, we can successfully prevent crises from escalating, saving lives and reducing suffering – fulfilling the most fundamental mandate of the United Nations”, he continued.
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The End of the Western Development Model?
Prof. Dr. Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2019
World Peace Academy, Basel, 7 May 2012 – Introduction by late Prof. Dietrich Fisher
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Neoliberalism Is a Political Project
David Harvey interviewed by Bjarke Skærlund Risager – Jacobin Magazine,
17 Jun 2019
Cornel West speaks of the Black Lives Matter movement as “an indictment of neoliberal power”; the late Hugo Chávez called neoliberalism a “path to hell”; and labor leaders are increasingly using the term to describe the larger environment in which workplace struggles occur. The mainstream press has also picked up the term, if only to argue that neoliberalism doesn’t actually exist. David Harvey on what neoliberalism actually is — and why the concept matters.
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(Italiano) Frattanto, nel mondo
Johan Galtung e Antonio C. S. Rosa | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2019
In effetti, sembriamo essere giunti al punto di essere noi stessi i nostri peggiori nemici, come maggior causa di morte e di ferimento da violenza e guerra. Eppure ci riferiamo a noi stessi come “intelligenti”, in cerca ovunque di qualcosa altrettanto “intelligente”.
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Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2019
Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 39/46 of 10 December 1984 – Entry into force 26 June 1987, in accordance with article 27 (1)
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Creative + Strategic = Effective Movements for Change
Rivera Sun – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2019
8 Jun 2019 – If you want to make change, think outside the protest box. It’s easy to get hung up on protests. We’ve heard about them, they’re highly visible, and they’re relatively easy to pull off. The problem with protests is that – all too often – they’re easily ignored. Creativity is key to making your actions meaningful and memorable. Paired with a sound strategy, creative actions can be unstoppable.
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Myanmar’s [Nobel Peace Laureate] Suu Kyi Is Turning Far-Right
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2019
8 Jun 2019 – Pictures from Budapest of a smiling Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi shaking hands with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s president, strikes fear for my Muslim friends back home in Myanmar, including the systematically persecuted Rohingya. The two reportedly exchanged their unconcealed fear and loathing of Muslims and migrants.
→ read full articleMeanwhile, Around the World
Johan Galtung and Antonio C. S. Rosa – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
In fact, we seem to have come to the point that we ourselves, as the major cause of death and being wounded through violence and war, are our own worst enemies. And yet we refer to ourselves as being “intelligent”, searching all over for something equally “intelligent”.
→ read full articleUN Expert Criticizes States for ‘Ganging Up’ on WikiLeaks’ Assange; Warns against Extradition, Fearing ‘Serious’ Rights Violations
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
On 9 May, the Special Rapporteur visited Mr. Assange with two medical experts who specialize in examining victims of ill-treatment. The team spoke to the prisoner and conducted a thorough medical assessment. “Mr. Assange’s health has been seriously affected by the extremely hostile and arbitrary environment he has been exposed to for many years,” he said. On Thursday [30 May], according to reports, Assange was too ill to appear via video-link from a British prison in a hearing over an extradition request from the US.
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In Memory of Binyavanga Wainaina, a Literary Gangster
Christine Mungai – Al Jazeera,
3 Jun 2019
Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina died on May 21, 2019 after a short illness. He inspired me and a whole generation of Kenyans to put pen to paper. He publicly came out as gay in 2014, in a country where homosexuality is criminalised, becoming the only openly gay public figure that I know of in this country. Rest in Peace.
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Sri Lanka: How the UN Failed Tamil Civilians in 2009
Nirmanusan Balasundaram – Al Jazeera,
3 Jun 2019
And how the legacy of this failure is still endangering lives in Sri Lanka and beyond. Today, May 18, 2019, marks one decade since the armed conflict in Sri Lanka came to a brutal end.
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Washington’s Huawei Hypocrisy… US Government Is Instrument of American Corporations
Finian Cunningham – RT,
3 Jun 2019
31 May 2019 – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Chinese Huawei as an agent for Beijing. The US government, conversely, is the consummate instrument of American corporations. Its congenital service to corporate profit-making is the real national security risk to American citizens and a global security threat for all people of the world due to the wars that Washington unswervingly pursues on behalf of US corporate interests.
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The Bottom Line: Go for the Money
Rivera Sun – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
24 May 2019 – It’s rare to hear business magazines admit the power of nonviolent action. As the editor of Nonviolence News, a service that collects and shares 30-50+ stories of nonviolence in action each week, I often see business journals minimizing the effect of activism. Usually, industry tries to conceal the impact nonviolent action has on their bottom line by chalking it up to market pressures.
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Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The United Nations General Assembly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.
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Transition from a Unipolar to a Multipolar Octagonal World
Johan Galtung | World Public Forum, Dialogue of Civilizations – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of TRANSCEND International and rector of TRANSCEND Peace University. He was awarded among others the 1987 Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize. Galtung has mediated in over 150 conflicts in more than 150 countries, and written more than 170 books on peace and related issues, 96 as the sole author. More than 40 have been translated to other languages. He has published more than 1700 articles and book chapters and over 500 Editorials for TRANSCEND Media Service.
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US Sanctions Have Cost Venezuelan Economy $130 Billion
Countercurrents Team – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
22 May 2019 – Sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Venezuela have cost the Bolivarian country billions of dollars while human suffering in the country is increasing, turning the sanctions a crime against humanity.
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UN Health Agency Highlights Lifestyle Choices That Can Prevent Onset of Dementia, as Millions More Succumb Each Year
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
14 May 2019 -Key lifestyle choices such as getting regular exercise, not smoking or drinking too much, can reduce the risk of dementia and cognitive decline, the UN health agency said today. Today, around 50 million people globally suffer from dementia and there are nearly 10 million new cases every year.
→ read full articleMyanmar: Conflict Resolution at ‘Total Standstill’, Military Commanders Must Answer for Crimes against Humanity
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
14 May 2019 – Myanmar’s military commanders must answer charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in a credible court, a United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (FFM) said today, urging the international community to cut off all financial and other support to them.
→ read full articleRegistration Gives Many Rohingya Refugees Identification for the First Time
Alex St-Denis | UNHCR – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
17 May 2019 – More than 270,000 stateless refugees from Myanmar provided with identity cards in an ongoing registration drive.
→ read full article
The Cocoyoc Declaration
Johan Galtung, et al. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
October 8-12, 1974 a symposium on “Patterns of Resource Use, Environment and Development Strategies” was convened in Cocoyoc, Mexico by the directors of UN Environment Programme and the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The Rapporteurs were Barbara Ward and Johan Galtung. The Cocoyoc Declaration is reproduced below, with certain sadness: it is as valid today, more than 40 years later. The two directors received a three-feet-long cable, from the US State Department, rejecting the declaration entirely. Signed by Henry Kissinger.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 May 1803 – 27 Apr 1882)
Ann Woodlief, Virginia Commonwealth University – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Emerson had become quite famous, a major figure in the American literary landscape, a celebrity which brought both adulation and satire. He had been a profound inspiration for many writers, especially Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman.
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A World without Walls
Johan Galtung | Academy for Cultural Diplomacy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
Berlin, Nov 2010 – International Conference on Peacebuilding, Reconciliation and Globalization in an Interdependent World
→ read full article
No Direction Home: The Journey of Frantz Fanon
Adam Shatz | Raritan Quarterly, Rutgers University – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
Winter 2019 – Reading Fanon, one sometimes has the impression that mere expository prose cannot do justice to the impulsive movement of his thought. I use the word “movement” advisedly: Fanon did not write his texts; he dictated them while pacing back and forth, either to his wife, Josie, or to his secretary, Marie-Jeanne Manuellan (who has just published a memoir about the experience). This method of composition lends his writings an electrifying musicality: restless, searching, and, as he fell prey to the leukemia that would kill him, otherworldly in its call for a new planetary order, cleansed of racism and oppression.
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Why Ukraine’s Comedian President Is Likely to Be More Joke than Solution
Editorial | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
26 Apr 2019 – The ordinary Ukrainian people are so sick and tired of the militaristic nationalism as well as endemic corruption in Kiev that they voted for someone, anyone, who appears slightly more reasonable.
→ read full articleMeanwhile, Around the World
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
What more is needed, beyond “dialogue of civilizations”? Like for man-woman: creating something new. A real dialogue goes beyond getting to know each other to mutual learning, beyond mutual learning to mutual visions, and beyond that to mutual practice.
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At China’s Belt and Road Forum, Guterres Calls for ‘Inclusive, Sustainable and Durable’ Development
UN News – TRANSEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
26 Apr 2019 – China’s international trade and economic development plan – known as the Belt and Road Initiative – could contribute to a more equitable, prosperous world, and to reversing the negative impact of climate change, Secretary-General António Guterres said today, speaking in Beijing, China.
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Poroshenko Out, Zelensky In. Will Things Change in Ukraine?
Tom Luongo | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
25 Apr 2019 – The incalculable damage that’s been done to the region for cynical geopolitical goals can never be undone but it can stop.
→ read full article
UNESCO Brisbane Declaration – Freedom of Information: The Right to Know
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
We, the participants at the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference in Brisbane, Australia, 3 May 2010:
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Planning Can Save the Planet: China Chooses Renewable Energy
Sara Flounders | Workers World – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
23 Apr 2019 – The United States and China are the largest consumers of coal and oil. The choices made by the leaders of the two largest industrialized economies are having an impact on climate and on air quality for everyone. But the decisions being made in these two countries are going in totally different directions. Their choices reveal a lot about the different social and political bases of each country.
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(Português) Einstein e Freud: Guerra e Paz Num Diálogo Interdisciplinar
Luis Henrique Beust | Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
O presente trabalho busca situar a relevância das ideias de Albert Einstein e de Sigmund Freud sobre a guerra e a paz para os esforços contemporaneos de construção de uma Cultura de Paz. Argumenta-se que suas contribuições são especialmente relevantes para fortalecer a ideia fundamental por trás dos esforços de educação para tal Cultura, qual seja, de que a guerra não é intrínseca à natureza humana, e que, portanto, pode ser eliminada.
→ read full articleEinstein and Freud: War and Peace in an Interdisciplinary Dialogue
Luis Henrique Beust | Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
The present work makes a case for the relevance of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud’s exchange on war and peace for current efforts towards establishing a Culture of Peace. The author concludes by suggesting that the exchange between them is directly in line with, and contributes towards, current efforts to promote such Culture — particularly regarding their shared view that war is not intrinsic to human nature and therefore can be eliminated.
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How ‘Never Again!’ World Deals with Modern Genocides
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
9 Apr 2019 – If your people suffer genocide, here is the package deal you will get from our indifferent world:
The mass media will descend on the crime scene as long as there is blood to be filmed;
Western media corporations will send your spokesperson a chauffeured Mercedes for a three-minute TV interview;
The UN General Assembly will pass a resolution or annual resolutions — as long as the genocide has not stopped — in order to try to appear to be doing something for the victims;
The Security Council will debate and adopt a non-binding resolution;
The secretary-general, the glorified chief clerk of the world’s most bloated bureaucracy whose purpose is long gone, will mention “Never again!” and lament his — never her — impotence;
Read on…
8 Things You May Not Know about Leonardo Da Vinci, on the 500th Anniversary of His Death
Richard Gunderman – The Conversation,
15 Apr 2019
10 Apr 2019 – Dead five centuries, Leonardo retains a rock star’s fame, well known around the world by just one name. Here, some facts about the man and his legacy.
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Rohingya Genocide Survivor Censored by American Patrons in His Testimony before the US Senate
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
9 Apr 2019 – It came to my attention that Tun Khin was, in effect, instructed to NOT mention the Genocide Convention in his testimony, because it would undermine a Burma legislation that IS SUPPOSED TO help Rohingyas. When a fact such as that the Genocide Convention exists – and was envisaged as a tool to actualize this post-Holocaust mantra “never again!” – is unwelcome at one of the most powerful chambers of power, US Senate – it becomes categorically questionable why the Senate sub-committee even holds such a hearing, wasting American taxpayers’ money and giving millions of victims FALSE HOPES – not just Rohingyas, but Uyghurs and Tibetans.
→ read full articleThu, 11 April Brief: Women in Peacekeeping, the Arrests of Assange & Sudan’s Leader, Updates on Libya, Nigeria & Syria
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
11 Apr 2019 – Today the Security Council looked at the key role played by women in the UN’s peacekeeping operations. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could be exposed to “serious human rights violations”, following his arrest in the United Kingdom, according a UN independent human rights expert. Fighting continues to escalate in Tripoli, Libya, and in Idlib, Syria, and 10,000 conflict-affected people were forcibly relocated in Nigeria and are in dire need of humanitarian aid.
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Facebook Removes Page of Ecuador’s Former President on Same Day as Assange’s Arrest
Elias Marat | The Mind Unleashed – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
11 Apr 2019 – Facebook has unpublished the page of Ecuador’s former president, Rafael Correa. The removal of his page for violating Facebook’s “community standards” is an unprecedented move, and the former statesman is the most high-profile public political figure to ever be removed from the social platform–placing him in the same unlikely category as right-wing conspiracy theorist and broadcaster Alex Jones.
→ read full articleBelgium and Other EU Members on the Recognition of the Sovereignty over the Golan Heights
UN Web TV – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2019
26 Mar 2019 – Press briefing by:
–Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve, Belgium
–François Delattre, France
–Christoph Heusgen, Germany
–Karen Pierce, United Kingdom
–Joanna Wronecka, Poland
The Communitarianism of Violence in the Sahel: States Confronted with the Challenge of Identity
Abdoulaye Bâ | Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2019
31 Mar 2019 – The new violent intrusion of “jihadism” in the Sahel in the early 2000s has plunged the region into a new, atypical phase of insecurity, which is putting a strain on social cohesion in these countries. Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, among others, have increasingly been hit in the last decade, and to varying degrees, by groups proclaiming “jihad”.
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(Français) Golan: Trump bafoue le droit international et plonge encore plus le Moyen-Orient dans l’instabilité
M. K. Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2019
2 Avr 2019 – Donald Trump a reconnu la souveraineté d’Israël sur le Golan, plateau syrien occupé illégalement depuis 1967. Motivée par des enjeux politiciens, sa décision pourrait créer un dangereux précédent au regard du droit international. Cette reconnaissance pourrait également avoir de graves répercussions sur tout le Moyen-Orient, une région déjà instable.
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Teach Your Children (Music Video of the Week)
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2019
From the 1970 Album “Déjà Vu” – A classic for teachers & parents.
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UN Agencies Urge Brunei to Repeal New ‘Extreme and Unjustified’ Penal Code
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2019
4 Apr 2019 – New criminal laws in Brunei that impose the death penalty for same-sex relationships, adultery and childbirth out of marriage, “breach international human rights norms”, and should be suspended or repealed said the heads of two United Nations agencies today.
→ read full articleMeanwhile, Around the World: An Overview
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2019
What is needed is a system where negative, violent relations are changing to neutral or no relations, where neutral or no relations are changing to positive, peaceful relations, and where positive, peaceful relations become even more peaceful and positive. The Octagon World might be one such system. But for this to work, the state system is not sufficient.
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Everywhere You Go in Gaza, You See People Wounded in the Return March
Rami Younis - +972 Magazine,
1 Apr 2019
28 Mar 2019 – According to figures released by the United Nations this week, since the protests began last March 30th, Israeli forces have shot and killed 195 participants, including 41 children. More than 29,000 protesters were injured or wounded, more than half of them by Israeli gunfire. Some estimate even higher numbers.
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It’s Cheaper to Replace Most Coal Plants with Renewables than Keep Them Open: Report
E.A. Crunden | Think Progress,
1 Apr 2019
New research finds that replacing 74 percent of coal plants with renewables would immediately reduce costs.
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Scientists from Around the World Call for Immediate Halt to ‘Genetically Altered Children’
Derrick Broze | The Mind Unleashed – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2019
21 Mar 2019 – Scientists and ethicists from around the world are warning of the consequences of failing to implement a temporary global halt on gene editing of human eggs, embryos, and sperm.
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Fukushima at Eight: Ongoing Cover-Up of the Nuclear Hazards in Japan and Abroad
Michael Welch, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and Arnie Gundersen – Global Research,
25 Mar 2019
As of November 2018, 18,434 people are known to have died from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and the follow-up tsunami which struck the nuclear facility. When the generators failed, three units experienced catastrophic meltdowns. Radioactive water has for years now been draining into the Pacific Ocean. Toxic debris spewed into the Earth’s atmosphere. More than 73,000 people remain evacuated and fully 3,600 die from causes like illness and suicide linked to the aftermath of the event.
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Primitive Accumulation
Daniel Little | Understanding Society – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
It is Marx’s account of the historical processes of change in rural life of the fifteenth through eighteenth century in Britain and Ireland, through which peasants were forced off their land and the commons were enclosed. Marx believes that this separation of the peasantry from the land was a necessary condition for the development of capitalism, in that it created the conditions in which there was a pliable and abundant proletariat. This “free” proletariat was needed for the creation of the factory system and the development of manufacturing cities. So the process of primitive accumulation created the changes in social relations, property relations, and the accumulation of wealth that permitted the creation of the capital-labor relation and factory-based capitalism.
→ read full articleUniversal Declaration of Human Rights
United Nations General Assembly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.
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UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar Advances Accountability and Initiates New Investigations
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
14 Mar 2019 – As a result of the serious nature of the findings of the Fact-Finding Mission, the Human Rights Council also established the Independent Mechanism on Myanmar. The new mechanism will build on the important work of the FFM by collecting, consolidating, preserving and analysing evidence of the most serious crimes and violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011.
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Dozens Killed and Injured by New Airstrikes in Western Yemen, UN Coordinator Condemns ‘Outrageous’ Toll
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
11 Mar 2019 – Reports from Yemen’s Hajjah Governorate indicate that scores of civilians have been killed following airstrikes that hit residential areas over the past two days. Medical sources suggest that at least 22 have died, with more than 30 injured during the aerial bombardment.
→ read full articleMyanmar: New Land Law Could Have Disastrous Impact on Ethnic Minorities
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
• Law affects traditional communities who passed down land for generations
• Revenues from resource extraction going to army and its allies
• Alleged crimes committed in Myanmar must be referred to ICC
Human Rights Council Discusses the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar
UN Human Rights Council – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
11 Mar 2019 – The Human Rights Council held an interactive dialogue with Yanghee Lee, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.
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UN Rights Expert Calls for End to ‘Purgatory’ of ‘International Inaction’ Facing Myanmar’s Remaining Rohingya
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
11 Mar 2019 – A humanitarian crisis fuelled by the suppression of basic human rights is continuing across Myanmar’s Rakhine state, a UN Human Rights Council-appointed expert said today, in an appeal for alleged atrocities there to be referred to the International Criminal Court.
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3-5°C Temperature Rise Is Now ‘Locked-in’ for the Arctic
UN Environment – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
• Even if Paris Agreement goals met, Arctic winter temperatures will increase 3-5°C by 2050 compared to 1986-2005 levels.
• Thawing permafrost could wake ‘sleeping giant’ of more greenhouse gases, potentially derailing global climate goals.
• Ocean acidification and pollution also posing major threats to Arctic
Blood Money: Meet the Top 20 Companies Profiting from Endless War
Elias Marat | The Mind Unleash – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Mar 2019
4 Mar 2019 – U.S. arms expenditures rose by $9.6 billion, driving the global rise and further consolidating the status of the United States as the world’s top spender on the military–by far. The U.S. spending on war is rooted in post-World War II “new Pentagon capitalism” that eventually became known as the military-industrial complex.
→ read full articleReport of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
UN Human Rights Council – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
25 Feb 2019 – Human Rights Situation in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories – The commission was mandated to focus on accountability and identifying those responsible for violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that some violations may constitute international crimes.
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Health and Development in Norway — A New Old Book from TRANSCEND University Press
TRANSCEND University Press - TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
With great pleasure TRANSCEND University Press (TUP) publishes a new book which is both the most modern and the oldest book from TUP as of today: Health and Development in Norway by Johan Galtung and Dag Viljen Poleszynski is the first ebook published by TUP and based on an unpublished manuscript from 1982. Most of the text has been reformatted and the book is now available for free in modern ebook formats.
→ read full articleAnti Reuter
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
The task of journalists is to mirror reality, empirical reality, not some potential reality desired by some and-or predicted by some. It is not to mediate to change empirical reality in favor a new social reality. The task of journalists mirroring reality would include information about communities handling successfully natural and-or social disasters and how; not only all those that did not.
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A Conspiracy of Decency
David Krieger | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
We will conspire to keep this blue dot floating and alive,
to keep the soldiers from gunning down the children;
to make the water clean and clear and plentiful,
Why Myanmar Must Develop an Identity of Inclusion
Khin Mai Aung| Lion’s Roar – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
28 Feb 2019 – Report from the International Conference on Protection and Accountability in Burma, which called attention to the ongoing human rights violations against Rohingya Muslims and other religious minorities in the Buddhist-majority country of Myanmar.
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Conference Calls for Action to End Rohingya Genocide
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
16 Feb 2019 – On Feb. 8 and 9 at Barnard College in New York City, the Free Rohingya Coalition held an extremely productive conference, drawing an audience of 200 researchers, activists and renowned academics from around 12 countries. Victims demand that ‘Never again!’ must be more than an empty slogan.
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UN Alliance of Civilizations Call for Applications for 2019 Fellowship Programme
UNAOC – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
The theme of the Fellowship 2019 is “The role of women in peacemaking and conflict prevention”. Candidates must be able to present professional achievements in these fields and have until Sunday March 10th 2019 to apply.
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Training in Conflict Transformation, Morocco
The Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
The Cordoba Foundation of Geneva’s work in Morocco has focused on building the capacity of university activists in conflict transformation with the aim of equipping them with the skills to alleviate violence between political groups in university campuses. When we asked these activists how their participation in our workshops changed their awareness about conflict and peace promotion, this is what they said.
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