Weapon Contamination

The 37th Intercultural Seminar was presented to us by José Bolívar Durán, 2nd year student in the International Master in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume (http://www.epd.uji.es)

In his seminar regarding Weapon Contamination Victims, José set focus on the horrible landmines, a vicious weapon that kills an injures an huge amount of innocent victims every year around the world.

José specified that he had three main objectives in his presentation:

1: What is Weapon Contamination? Presenting a general panorama of the problem.

2: Brief Overview of the Problem. Exposing the main humanitarian and environmental consequences.

3: A New Approach from Peace Studies. Stimulating a debate and identify possible and new answers to victims.

“Anti-personnel mine” is a mine designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure or kill. Different materials are used in the production of these mines, incuding toxic chemicals, biological toxins, different metals or garbage.

These weapons are distributed around in the landscape either through being planted,  dropped, launched or projected. Millions of these still remains unexploded in the terrain of conflict areas around the world, also after the conflict has ended, spreading death and devastation, terror and insecurity. Huge amount of fertile ground or woods are off-limits for the local population due to the danger of triggering one of these mines. Due to this these horrifying weapons have widespread social, cultural and economic impact aswell, besides the physical and psychological terror it causes.

Some facts about Antipersonel Mines:

In 2011 4.286 mortal victims were registered, this mount up to 12 victims a day. One must be aware of the fact that there are many more victims than that, but many are not reported, registered etc. The total number of casualties are therefore much higher.

Since the first report from the Landmine Monitor was published, 2011 has been the worst year in terms of international assistance to landmine victims.

On state level, landmine production includes the countries of India, Myanmar, Pakistan and South Korea. Seven other countries also reserve the right to produce landmines: China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, United States and Vietnam. The use of landmines by non-state groups was confirmed in Afghanistan, Colombia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand and Yemen.

The United Nation Development Program (UNDP) estimated that around 71% of the victims are civilians, of which 32% are children.

The cost of production of landmines is very low, between 3 and 30 dollars. The demining of each unity costs between 300 and 1000 dollars and presents high risks for the life of the professional who is carrying out the deactivation.

Today, it is calculated that there are some 110 millions of anti-personal mines in the world and that, each year, 2 millions more are added.

The damage that the mines cause are devastating. The victims-if not killed, suffer loss of limbs, damage to eyes, hearing or other body parts and other terrible injuries. Often children are very vulnerable to landmines, since they play in the fields or the woods where the mines are hidden. Many mines has a roundlike shape and may be mistaken for a football etc.. The physical and psychological impacts that the victims experience after the actual accident is also severe. Due to their disability, they may face discrimination, difficulties finding jobs, lack of psicosocial support may cause longterm psychological damage, lack of protesis´, consequences for their education etc.. .Due to this many becomes victims of forced displacement. The landmines also cause environmetal damage.

José ended his seminar he named several factors necessary to keep on fighting this horrible practice. First one must keep on insisting on the elimination of the production and use of these weapons.
 This must be done through putting pressure on governments to sign the Mine Ban Treaty. As of today 59 countries around the world has still not signed. It is also crucial to support resistance processes, through setting focus and visibility on the grave problem and its victims.

Here is a link to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a global network that works in over 100 countries in order to make a world without antipersonel landmines.  http://www.icbl.org/intro.php . Their important work also focuses on helping victims to live fulfilling lives. The Campaign was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 as a recognition for its efforts in bringing about the Mine Ban Treaty.

I want to thank José Bolívar Durán for this very interesting seminar, and his important effort to set focus on this horrible and inmoral practice that still is carried out around the world in a great scale. More pressure must be exercised on governments to prohibit its production and use of anti-personnel mines!

 

Source: Power point presentation from seminar, and own research

The Time Factor as Key in Sustainability

The 36th Intercultural Seminar was presented to us by Maria Novo, UNESCO Chair professor in Environmental Education and Sustainable Development, at the National University of Distance Education (UNED), Madrid

María sees the Time Factor as being the Key in Sustainability, and started off with the inicial question to the audience: “What is time?” . We heard several different answer from the audience on their personal perception of time. She raiseed the question in order to stimulate a brainstorm in the participants. This was in order to go further into the meaning of a word that we use so many times during the day, but that we often do not give much thought.

Maria then proceeded to her definition which is that ”Time is a social construction, a category that makes us understand reality”. Sustainability is defined as “the ability to meet the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Novo, 2013).

The present rythm of life that we experience today, combined with the extraction of natural resources, is threatening the sustainability of the human race and the planet as we know it. During the the last 20 years we have consumed the same amount of resources than during the whole 20th century. We are experiencing an emergency of the entire world system; both socially, economically and ecologically. Rhytm-the stress-the consumption-speed- environmental change. We are in a new era, the anthropocene era.

The Anthropocene is a geological chronological term that serves to mark both the evidence and extent on the global impact on the Earth´s ecosystems caused by human activities. We are in an era of great uncertainty when it comes to environmental issues, eventhough several consequences now are starting to become crystal clear. Still we need TIME to understand, to act and adapt into this new reality of the biosphere. Sadly we are running out of that time.. We have to understand the irreversability of time, that it is not a renewable resource, as the planets natural resources we are consuming at a ferocius speed  are not renewable.

The contemporary society is plagued with a new sickness/condition: STRESS. The capitalist system is constructed upon the idea that “time is money”, and we need to produce and consume at an increasing pace. The obligation we feel towards the system goes out on the expense of personal care. The ethics and politics in the modern society is more and more based on the idea that the world is a big industry. Our society is endangered by productivity, and we are increasingly forgetting what it means to live since the system is selling economic welfare at the expense on personal and family welfare.

Maria talked about Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which focuses on cuantitative happinesss, and the epistemological twist towards the  Happiness Domestic Product (HDP), which focus is on cualitative happiness. Here is where TIME becomes an important variable.

Spain is experiencing a severe economic and social crisis, and the crisis is first and foremost focused on economis issues, not on the impact the crisis has on the quality of life of its citizens. What is needed is a reappropriation of time,it needs to be a political act in which you have to put a lot of imagination.
TIME is a variable of ME and my experiences, which may be for example the time we spend with our loved ones. Maybe also the “right to be lazy” at certain points, to have time to live.

Today we travel the world more than ever, but the goal now is to reach the destination as soon as possible, we need to shorten the time “wasted” in order to be able to do, produce and consume as much as possible in the little time we have. We need to look for a new “Culture of Time”, since today what we experience is a new reality; to be stressed is the new norm. We presume that we do not have time for anything. To be stressed is almost seen as a sign of status, it is a sign of success and competitiveness.

We need to change this way of looking at time: Time is freedom, and freedom is time. The present is the only thing we have.

Maria called for a change of paradigm, since the last one has expired. The planet does not handle the impact we, the human beings, are causing. The pace of consumerism we are carrying out is not sustainable. This new paradigm needs some references. The expired one is the one of the big, the distant (the global), the fast, . The new paradigm needs to be based on: The small, the close/near (the local), the slow. 

Here is a seminar by Maria Novo where she goes further into the issues mentioned above. (Unfortunately only in spanish)

 

Sources: The above mentioned, and own research

Understanding Gender Based Violence against Women in War and Its Aftermath: The Case of Burundi and DRC

The  35th Intercultural Seminar was presented by  2nd year master students Marissa Pothen, Priscyll Anctil Avoine and Iris Musthitsi from the International Master of Peace, Conflict and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I (http://www.epd.uji.es)

Through their seminar the students received a deeper understanding on Gender based Violence against women during War, focusing on rape of women in the DRC and Burundi.

Rape has been used as a weapon of war in various conflicts around the world, but the case of eastern Congo is specially reknowned for the systematic use of this horrific practice for over a decade.  1/3 of all women in the conflict areas inCongo has been raped, and 75% of the surviving victims has been gang raped.

Congo has suffered two wars and is experiencing an ongoing guerrilla warfare. Rape is being used as a weapon to torture and humiliate, and has devastating physical and psychological impact on the hundreds of thousands of women and children have fallen victim. The rapes are usually carried out in groups, which inflicts great damage and torture for the the victim. Many women has gotten pregnant as the result of the violence, and many has also gotten diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

Here are some testemonies from women who has experienced this horrendous violations

Marissa, Priscyll and Iris pointed out the main theories regarding Wartime rape:

•Gender Inequality Theory is based upon the predication of unequal power relations, discrimination and misogyny in patriarchal societies, which are exacerbated by the promotion of aggression and violence during war

•Feminist Theory emphasize that rape in war, as rape in peace, is identified not as a crime of sexual passion but as a crime motivated by the desire of a man to exert dominance over a woman

• Cultural Pathology Theory involves aspects of cultural psychoanalysis and helps to better understand wartime rape in specific case. The aim is to look back into a nation’s history and analyze what developmental factors culminated to cause its men to participate in sexual violence

•Biosocial Theory claims that sociocultural factors are insignificant variables in a perpetrator’s decision to rape; the activity is wholly under genetic control. Due to this, wartime rape is inevitable, genetically predetermined and a natural reflex

•Strategic Rape Theory is currently the most influential regarding mass wartime rape. Rape may be considered a tactic executed by soldiers in the service of larger strategic objectives. Military officials do not necessarily instruct soldiers to rape; however, it may serve as a coherent, coordinated, logical and brutally effective means of prosecuting warfare. Some advocates of Strategic Rape Theory refer to it as “genocidal rape” – rape intended, with consciousness or not, to annihilate a people and culture

To better understand why rape is used during war it is important to deconstruct the underlying factors. as Gaëlle-Le Goff, (2010: 17) states: “Violence against women does not originate with war and conflicts; it emerges from prior social, economic and cultural discrimination that fuel sexual violence when a conflict erupts.”

Rape is used since it is a cheap way to weaken the enemy and it is effective over large areas, inexpensive to implement and does not particularly endanger the attackers.  There are different motivations for the use of rape during conflict being either  a tool to destabilize a population, to instill fear, as a tool for ethnic cleansing, as punishment, or as a reward or to boost the moral for the soldiers.

The perpetrators in the DRC are mainly the armed fighters  from the groups FARDC, FDLR, Mai-Mai and others militias, but it has been observed that rapes are increasingly perpetrated by civilians. This can be in some extent explained by the long duration of war and the culture of impunity in the area.

Sexual violence has severe impacts on the community level, an witnesses states that when a woman from their local community is raped, the whole community is raped.  A part of the strategy of rape is carrying it out publicly, in front of family or community members. This is in order to display the womans dishonor in order to destroy the social order of the community. The devestating impact affects the families and communities long after the war has ended.

A greater focus by the International Community on these horrendous crimes and the severe impacts it causes on women, children and whole communities is called for!

Sources: Powerpoint from presentation, and the above mentioned sources

The Franco Genocide: Memory, History and Justice

The 34th Intercultural Seminar was presented to us by José Angel Sanchez Rocamora, 2nd year master student in the International Master in Peace Conflict and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I (http://www.epd.uji.es)

José had invited Empar Salvador, the president of the Fòrum de la Memòria del País Valencià FMPV (The Forum for Memory in The Valencian Country). This is an entity with support from various international actors, to investigate the circumstances around the mass graves that has been found during the last years in the Valencian cemetery. Recent lists have been published by FMPV that demonstrates that in these mass graves more than 26.300 people were burried between the end of the Spanish Civil War and 1946.  (http://www.forumperlamemoria.org/?VALENCIA-YA-BUSCA-LA-VERDAD)

During the Franco regime, that lasted from 1936 until 1975, Spain was under the authoritarian dictatorship. The regime  was formed  by Francisco Franco and the National Defense Committee, a faction of the Spanish army that had rebelled against the Republic, after the victory of the Spanish Civil War.  Franco had been backed from abroad by both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and also some groups of Catholics, especially in The United States. The Second Spanish Republic was backed by Stalinist Soviet Union and Mexico.

Terror became an explicit policy of the new regime, and Franco and other generals spoke freely about how they would need to pursue and kill the ones that had supported the Popular Front during the Civil War. This was the left wing party that had won greatly in the last elections in Spain. The executions by the fascist regime  claimed more than 200.000 lives of men and women. Another 200.000 died in the Army´s concentration camps, or subject to hunger or disease or other circumstances. (Navarro, 2008)

Here is the documentary that was shown during the seminar, which shows family members of the people that disappeared during the Franco Regime, testemonies of people that were present and experienced the events that happened in Valencia during the repression, and the people that are involved in the investigation. It gives an horrific insights in the terror that the population of Valencia lived during the ranco dictatorship. Unfortunately it is without english subtitles, due to that I post another video that showing similar experiences under.

In English:

The Truth Commity seeks the truth and reconciliation, and the end to the impunity that the Franco regime, now as in the past, has received in Spanish history. They see that this is a crucial component in order to restore justice and democracy in Spain. The western democratic world has failed to pursue morally and juridically Francos military dictatorship, and points out how the Spanish State´s juridical courts has persecuted war criminals outside of its borders, while giving the blind eye to the spanish citizens responsible for the slaughtering of tens of thousands of innocent people during the Franco Regime.( http://www.forumperlamemoria.org/?El-genocidi-franquista-a-Valencia)

The war criminals of the Franco regime (both delayed and still living) must be persecuted and tried  in order to restore justice so that the reconciliation process can proceed. Justice for the victims now!

 

Sources: The above mentioned

 

Music and Peace

The 33rd Intercultural Seminar was presented by Andrea Rodríguez Sánchez, 2nd year master student in the International Master in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I (http://www.epd.uji.es)

Andreas seminar was about the contribution of music in processes of peace building, and she used an example from the village Villavicencio in her home country Columbia. BATUTA META is a program that is developed by the EU in cooperation with Batuta, and is directed at displaced children and adults and musicians in Villavicencio.

Colombia has experienced and enourmous amount of internally displaced people from aroung 1948 up untill today These massive displacements are due to the conflict between the government, various paramilitary groups and the FARC guerrilla. It started off in 1948, with what is historically knowned as La Violencia (The Violence) with the assasination of the populist political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. There are a mix of groups and motives involved in the fighting. The FARC and various guerrilla states their reason to be a search for the rights for the poor, with the goal of providing social justice and protection from the Colombian governnment. The paramilitary groups to respond to the threats from the guerrilla groups, and the Colombian government claims it fights in order to seek stability and protect the rights and interests of its citizens. All have been accused of murder, kidnappings and human rights violations, and the conflict which during the decades has spinned off into a catastrophic violent spiral, has caused devastation, and has claimed more than 250 000 victims and between 3,6 to 5,2 million displaced people.   80% of the displaced are women and children according to ACNUR in 2012, and 94% lives under the poverty line according to the UN in 2010.

Andrea pointed out how these forced displacements damage the life projects of those who fall victim to them, as well as the severe psychosocial impacts.

The interamerican court of Human rights stated that “The sudden rupture of this search (for a life project), by manmade factors  (such as violence, injustice, discrimination), that alter and destroy unfairly and arbitrarily the project of a person’s life, of particularly seriousness – the law can not remain indifferent. Life-at least we know it, is only one, and has a time limit, and the destruction of life project cause almost always irreparable damage, and is almost impossible to repair ”

Other psychosocial impacts is the damage on identity, in the autonomy and affects existencial security.

Laura Fleischer (2004) states that: ” art may have another function beyond aesthetics taken out of the functional spaces of situations of injustice, and move its generating capacity towards change, where new spaces seeks to promote inclusion, recognition of the subject and the return of their dignity that has been wounded and weaving ties with different groups planting in the subject the desire for change ”

The Orchestra La Reliquia in Villavicencio seeks to express feelings through music, and stimulate the ability to cooperation through the individual and collective. This as a powerful tool to promote and inspire trust and hope.

Andrea brought us a beautiful phrase that explains the essence of using music for its therapeutic and reconcilable ability:”Art is a solution. It is art that gives consolation when confronted with the certainty of chaos and the  force of horror . Art is an analgesic, not an anesthetic. The art is what gives serenity when confronted with disaster ”

Personal elaborations  promote social processes, and is has a great capacity for Peace(es). It was very inspiring to see how the program in Villavicencio has helped many children and adults that are victims of the still ongoing conflict in Colombia.

This whole experience reminded me of the seminar presented by Paco Damas on Poetry for Peace, aswell as on another initiative that promotes peace through music. There is a youth and education project in Cateura, Paraguay, called the LandFill Harmonic. Cateura is a slum that is build on a landfill, and they have foud a creative solution to transform garbage into instruments. The idea is to see beyond garbage as just garbage, and see beyond, to be aware of the possible utility of the garabge. This combined by beeing social and educational project, whoich will bring people together and with focus on positivity, music and peace. The orchestra involves children and youth from the local community, and the project demonstrates that creative and simple solutions can bring powerful social transformation to the poorest communities.

Here is a look on this beautiful story:

For further information, and to get involved with the project please visit: http://www.creativevisions.org/get-involved/cap/landfill-harmonic

 

Sources: Power point presentation from the seminar, and the above mentioned