Rape Still a Weapon of War

By Anneloes van Iwaarden

Rape as a weapon of war: it was officially outlawed by the UN in June 2008 but it is still a daily practice in East Congo says Rwandan genocide survivor Leah Chishugi.

In the BBC discussion program Hardtalk, Leah Chishugi told horrifying stories of rape being used as a weapon of war in East Congo.

Herself a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, Leah Chishugi went to East Congo and recorded the atrocities being committed against Congolese women.

She talked to and documented many victims of rape including a 90 year-old women who could hardly walk and a three-year-old girl who had also been conceived by means of rape.

As she told The Guardian “I am not a politician but I want to let the world know what is going on. I believe that Kagame, [Joseph] Kabila [the Congolese president] and [Laurent] Nkunda [the Tutsi rebel leader] all know exactly what is going on.”

And very disturbing, too, was her conclusion that the UN was not doing anything to protect these women. In the villages and towns Leah Chishugi visited, she saw the odd UN car, but no real practical effort on the ground.

UN action
So what has the UN been doing against this violence against women?

In June 2008 the UN Security Council voted unanimously for a resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war, as the BBC reports.

Even though UN Resolution 1820 is an unprecedented step, it is hard to see how this political step translates into action on the ground.

When reportedly 70% of women in many villages in Congo have been raped, words on paper mean very little to both the victims of rape and their families and communities.

Stop ‘the Fear Factor’

By Anneloes van Iwaarden

Terror attacks, threat of nuclear war, severe weather conditions due to global warming, and economic crises all contribute to uncertainty.

In a culture of fear, society is crippled by these anxieties and is increasingly frightened for its future.

Politics has sometimes embellished on the ‘fear factor’ in order to justify certain policy choices.

The decision to invade Iraq in 2003, for example, illustrates this point.

On other occasions leaders might have downplayed the seriousness of certain fears to justify other policy choices.

For a long time President G.W. Bush dismissed any evidence linking human actions to global warming.

History Repeats Itself
‘Culture of fear’ is not a new phenomenon.

During the Cold War, the world was rife with (very justified) fears of nuclear war. In the post-9/11 era fears run high once again.

And now a looming global economic depression is fear factor number one.

Today, in The Sunday Times we could read commentaries by six economics experts on the global economic crisis.

Summarising what the experts said: the outlook for the world economy is very bleak, Great Depression bleak.

My favourite comment was the one by Professor of European Political Economy at the LSE Willem Buiter: “The recession in the US, the UK, the eurozone, Japan and the rest of Europe is, with probability verging on certainty, going to be so deep and so prolonged that the zero lower bound (on interest rates) will be reached even by the most anal-retentive gradualist central bank before the middle of 2009.”

How helpful are these comments?

When 2008 Nobel Prize Winner for economics Paul Krugman comments on the crisis by saying “I’m getting scared,” what hope is there for the man on the street to have any confidence in the economy?

It is ironic that these same economic experts and politicians are desperately urging consumers to spend their way out of the economic crisis.

Perhaps it is all just wishful thinking (and a little naïve), but keeping the ‘fear factor’ to a minimum right now might just be the ticket to get us through recession.

If anything, not living in fear will keep society just a little happier in gloomy times.

More than Humanitarian Aid for Zimbabwe

By Anneloes van Iwaarden

New outrage is voiced over how Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe is ruling the country amidst the severest cholera outbreak Zimbabwe has known in ten years.

According to the UN on 5 December, there have been 589 reported deaths so far and the number of supposed cases of cholera has climbed to 14,000.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown now joins ranks with Condoleezza Rice and Archbishop Tutu in calling upon the international community to act.

The BBC reports the Prime Minister stating that this is now an international crisis where there “is no state capable or willing of protecting its people”.

In the words of the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon: “The UN and its relief partners must respond quickly to address the needs of Zimbabweans and prevent the cholera epidemic from spreading.”

After Humanitarian Aid
Naturally focus is given to the immediate humanitarian crisis at hand but there is, as of yet, no consensus on further action on President Mugabe’s rule of Zimbabwe.

Reuters reports on the European Union’s intentions to impose more sanctions on the government of Zimbabwe.

But as past sanctions have done little to remedy the political and economic state of affairs in Zimbabwe, imposing new sanctions might only make the situation worse.

Perhaps it is now time to finally pull out, dust off and give some real teeth to the 2005 notion of ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P).

As it states on the R2P website: “In 2005, world leaders agreed, for the first time, that states have a primary responsibility to protect their own populations and that the international community has a responsibility to act when these governments fail to protect the most vulnerable among us.”

The international community is acting by giving much-needed humanitarian aid to the people of Zimbabwe.

But in the true spirit of the R2P statement; humanitarian aid is just not enough.

Not Quite ‘Thank you Darling’ Yet

By Anneloes van Iwaarden

Consumers in Britain have received an early Christmas present this Monday in the form of a 13-month cut in the Value Added Tax (VAT) on products.

The much-debated VAT cut from 17.5% to 15% came into effect on the 1st of December and will last until the 31st of December 2009.

Father Christmas, a.k.a. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling announced his plans to boost consumer spending in his 2008 Pre-budget Report on 24 November.

But the VAT cut might prove to be a rather expensive present and one which Britain can ill afford in these times of recession.

The Tory party have criticised Labour’s spending spree harshly, pointing to an already high budget deficit.

To the BBC, shadow chancellor George Osborne (Conservative) said that Mr. Darling was “bringing this country to the verge of bankruptcy” by doubling the national debt to £118bn next year.

Desperate Times
But Mr. Darling was adamant that desperate times call for desperate measures: “In these exceptional economic circumstances, I want to take fair and responsible steps to protect and support businesses and people now.”

And it is not only the opposition parties that are critical of the VAT cut as many consumers are wondering whether a 2.5% decrease in prices will make all that much difference to their wallets.

And will it really make shoppers want to spend more, giving that all-important impulse to the economy we hear so much about?

According to the BBC, the 2.5% decrease will mean that a Mars bar is 1p cheaper, you can buy a JVC LCD television for £12.77 less than before and a pair of Levi’s jeans will be down £1.49.

Even if this doesn’t sound like much in the short-run, I suppose it will add up to a substantial amount over the full 13 months. So far so good.

Unwanted side-effects
There are, however, some negative side-effects to this VAT cut as it also extends to products that, in my opinion, should not be reduced in price.

I am talking of the Sainsbury’s (durable) shopping bag.

Before the VAT cut the shopping bag cost shoppers 10p, a measure taken to discourage shoppers to use the plastic shopping bags in the first place.

To my dismay, whilst unloading my shopping basket, I saw that the shopping bag price had been reduced to 9p. Now where is the point in that?

Given that the Pre-budget report devotes a whole chapter on ‘Delivering on environmental goals’, I believe Mr. Darling might have overlooked this small but obvious discrepancy in his financial plans.

So you won’t hear me saying ‘Thank you Darling’ just yet.

The true Father Christmas will make Sainsbury’s re-think its plastic bag policy (and stop giving out free flimsy plastic bags in the first place).