Today’s Talk

I talk about the rich quite often in terms of them investing their money in social issues.  In a world filled with poverty, disease and violent crimes, much of the third world looks at the U.S. and thinks “how can they waste of so much that they have?”  One particular area that is taken for granted in the U.S. is education.  If you take a look at education standards in other countries like Singapore, China where education is of high importance in teens as they grow up and compare it to that of the U.S. there is a huge difference.

Even in poor countries in Africa, where they often grow up in poverty and literally study if they are lucky to during the day light because of no electricity, education is still of high importance.  Well, Oprah recently dedicated and built a girl’s school in South Africa to a group of 73 young girls who will now have the chance of receiving a wonderful education and future.  The girls will be subjected to higher standards of excellence compared to what is being taught in U.S. schools.  In addition, the school will eventually host about 425 girls from grades 7-12.

Winfrey said, “One of the things that’s very important for me is for the girls to be proud of themselves and to be proud of the way they look and where they come from, and a lot of them in the beginning were very embarrassed about being poor.”   Coming from a poor family myself (American standards) I too was embarrassed of being poor.  It was through education that I saw a way out for myself.  It is true, we in America have so many opportunities that others do not.

Most of the girls come from “true poverty” with no running water and no electricity.  The opposition that Oprah was faced with when building the school was great.  She said “The resistance was too much, What are you doing? What do they need all that room for? Why does a girl need all that closet space when she has no clothes?  That’s what they first said to me. And my idea was to understand, yes, you come from nothing, but oh, what a something you will become, if given the opportunity,”

Touché Oprah, a round of applause for giving a dream to a group of what will become over 400 students who would have probably lived their who lives without knowing how to read and dying just as poor as they were born. 

With the start of the New Year, the U.N. is also starting off anew with a brand new leader.  I must admit that having a new leader represent and lead the world in international affairs is like getting a new Pope for me.   Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from S. Korea has a daunting task ahead of head in many regions of the world.  He is scheduled to visit parts of Africa along with the Middle East.  I would encourage him to spend more time in Africa as parts of it are in need of badly needed help. 

He stated in a press conference that “As the secretary-general, at the same time, while I am firmly against impunity, I also hope that members of the international community should pay due regard to all aspects of international humanitarian laws. During my entire tenure, I’ll try my best to help member states, (the) international community, to strengthen the rule of law.”

This year will prove to be a difficult year for him as many parts of the world are in need of either humanitarian assistance or diplomacy negotiations. 

It is hard to imagine that children as young as 6 years old are being taught to kill. As children across the U.S. and other countries are playing with each other, children in Africa and parts of Latin America are being sent to fight and to die.

A young child soldier said “They’d whip us as punishment. If you made a mistake, they’d whip you up to 70 or even 120 times.” Children do not have the opportunity to say no in fighting. Either you fight or are shot dead on the spot. Countries that are actively recruiting child soldier are Sri Lanka, Congo, Colombia, Ivory Coast and Afghanistan.

These children come from countries that are in the middle of civil and tribal wars and ravished with poverty. These children literally have no place to go.

The respective governments of these child soldiers care nothing about this type of social issue thus leaving international organizations to fight for the rights of these young soldiers. Often times, international organizations can do little to prevent this from happening.

So you may ask, how do the children feel? One child soldier said “Some people came looking for former soldiers, for child soldiers. … It had been my intention to return to the army,” he said. “Even if my mother and family could take me back, they don’t have the means to send me back to school. Here, the only thing I can do is steal. All I can do is roam around the streets.” Another Congolese child said “I’d rather fight for my country than stay home with no food.”

It’s these types of social issues that the international community must pay closer attention too unfortunately, I fear that day is far in the future.

Welcome back to my special series on the Darfur crisis. Today I will give you a bit more information on the humanitarian issue that is taking place. Some international organizations refuse to call the mass killings a genocide, however with the mass amounts of murders that have occurred these organizations will have to review their definitions on what a genocide is.

A U.N. court set up for probing and documenting war crimes in Darfur produced a report stating that thousands of innocent civilian deaths, hundreds of rapes and a significant number of mass murders (hundreds being killed at once) have been reported. So you ask, who exactly is committing these murders? The U.N. states that from its investigation that the Massalit, Zaghawa and Fur ethnic groups have been among the most noted in committing crimes against humanity. Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor with the International Criminal Court said “In most of the incidents … there are eyewitness accounts that the perpetrators made statements reinforcing the targeted nature of the attacks, such as ‘we will kill all the black’ and ‘we will drive you out of this land.”

So far the Sudan courts have been unwilling to conduct and prosecute their citizens involved with these atrocities. It is my belief that only when the Sudan government realizes there is a grave problem within their country in addition to accepting international help in terms of a peace force and legal expertise that the humanitarian crisis will end.

Read more here:

Introduction 101
Introduction 151

UNICEF and their effort with the crisis
Office report from the International Commission (PDF)

Today, Vietnam has made significant achievements in its economy, health, education and urban sectors. The recent conclusion of the APEC meeting in Hanoi, showed the international community just how much of an “Asian Tiger” Vietnam hopes to become. What must people did not see on the news while following President Bush and others travel to Vietnam was the preparation the Vietnamese government in order to exert a good image.

Peasants around Vietnam were carted off weeks before and relocated to camps outside of Hanoi’s city limits. Soldiers were particularly sent to homes of political dissidents (Pham Que Duong, Hoang Tien, Nguyen Khac Toan, Nguyen Van Dai, Le Thi Cong Nhan, Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, Nguyen Phuong Anh) that were under house arrest. In addition, my sources from Vietnam stated that the international media was trying to contact several citizens to talk to them about Vietnam. However, they were either forced from seeing these individuals or the Vietnamese government cut off their telephone lines to prevent communication.

The Vietnamese government must take several steps to opening up its country and fixing its internal social crisis such as population growth so that Vietnam can emerge as a full grown “Asian Tiger” in the future.

As a continuation of my earlier introduction 101 to the Darfur crisis, introduction 151 will go into a bit more detail now that you are familiar with who is fighting and why.

The conflict started in early 2003 with a peace deal in 2004 being reached. However, since then many states along with the United Nations have passed and/or condemned the acts of violence in Sudan. But who exactly is helping to bring peace to the region? And what happen to the peace deal?

Which countries are helping?
Well, the African Union has over 7,000 troops, which have been sent to the region. This number is far to few to cover the area needed to obtain security in the region. In addition, the training of the soldiers to combat the violence is less than adequate. The African Union itself is poorly funded which means the amount of time that is required to obtain and sustain peace in Darfur outreaches the African Union’s ability.

The United Nations has called for and agreed to sent UN peacekeeping soldiers of roughly 17,000 troops and 3,000 UN police men. However, the Sudan government has not allowed this force to obtain rights to enter into the country.

What happen to the peace deal?
Basically, nobody lived up to the deal. The SLA leader could not control the smaller factions of his group, which have committed numerous abuses to the people of Sudan. The actual government did not enforce the terms of the peace deal to disarm the Janjaweed either. Read more here. The actual terms of the peace deal included:

• A permanent cease-fire and the exact language of the peace deal were determined.
• The government and the southern rebels had agreed to set up a 39,000-strong army comprising fighters from both sides.
• The south should be autonomous for six years.
• Three border areas with special status were initiated where power is to be shared.

As always, I hope this information is informative to anyone wanting to know more about the crisis in the Sudan and stay tune for further information on this issue.

Further information:

Security Council resolution 1574 (2004)
Security Council resolution 1556 (2004)
Security Council resolution 1564 (2004)

Not too many of us are familiar with the crisis that is happening in Darfur. The warning signs were far too evident years ago that Sudan would end up in complete devastation due to hatred amongst its people.

So Today’s Talk will feature a brief 101 introduction course on the Darfur conflict to enable us to know what is taking place in our international community.

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