By Anwarul K. Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Aug 22 2023 – 14 June has become a black day for the UN High Forum on The Culture of Peace (HLF-CoP) convened by the successive Presidents of the UN General Assembly since 2012.

This exalted, high profile, much-celebrated, much-awaited popular, productive, and purposeful gathering of the General Assembly was derailed in a very ill conceived and unthoughtful manner by the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly (OPGA) and the current Team Bangladesh at the UN.

And that was done without even informing the civil society which has been a major partner in organizing the day-long event for a decade.

Also, important to recall that during the last ten years, the Culture of Peace agenda of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) was taken up as an integral part of the HLF-CoP and the annual resolution on the follow up of the Declaration and Programme Action on a Culture of Peace was adopted.

That was purposeful and had substantive implications related to collaboration between Member States and civil society advocating the culture of peace.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

Though adoption of a resolution is an intergovernmental affair, in view of the fact the UN’s foundational documents on culture of peace give civil society a special role asserting that “Civil society needs to be fully engaged in fuller development of a culture of peace” (Article 5 of the Declaration).

The first and only occasion the UN has done that.

The annual UN resolutions on the subject also repeated that special role since 1997. Why then this bypassing of the civil society by the organizers of the HLF-CoP? Over the last ten years since 2012, GMCoP has worked closely with OPGA mostly with positive outcomes.

But the 77th OPGA and Team Bangladesh at the UN were found to be not interested in collaborating with the civil society.

The event was truncated into a half-day affair calling it a Plenary Meeting. The whole spirit of connecting the Members States through a day-long engagement held in two parts was totally abandoned. The other half is known popularly as the civil society component of the Forum. In the decade-long history of the HLF-CoP, this has never happened.

Why the Culture of Peace is such an anathema?

The opening speech by current President of the General Assembly (PGA) on 14 June had no reference to the main issue – Culture of Peace. Even the foundational document was not mentioned in full in his presentation.

Wonder what was the motivation? PGA speaking on the agenda item 14 on Culture of Peace do not find it necessary to mention culture of peace even once, yes, not a single time. His speechwriter must have prepared it to recycle it for other similar peace-related occasions.

In the section containing “Conclusion and recommendations” of the “Report of the UN Secretary-General on a Culture of Peace (A/77/614)” of 29 November 2022, paragraph 42 says:

“As outlined in “Our Common Agenda” (OCA), a culture of peace must be based on a better understanding of the underlying drivers that sustain conflict, an idea that will be developed further through the Secretary-General’s “New Agenda for Peace” (NAP).

Neither of those two Agendas – OCA and NAP – mention “culture of peace” at all, yes, no reference at all. This is a gross misinformation recorded in the Report of the UN Secretary-General. One would again wonder where we have reached in terms of accuracy and thoroughness.

Nobody, not even the so-called culture of peace defender Team Bangladesh, noticed because the delegates do not read the SG’s report as thoroughly as they are expected to.

The incumbent Secreatary-General has the unique distinction of not attending a single HLF-CoP, including the 20th anniversary forum, during his seven years at the UN in the post. His predecessor attended in person a number of times to listen to the wise words of the Nobel laureates and other eminent persons.

HLF-CoP is the only Forum of the UN which was graced by the participation of as many as six Nobel Peace Laureates – all women to honor the global role and work of women for the culture of peace. In the UN history, nothing like this happened at any annual event or on any occasion.

Pope Francis’ recent book (English version) on war and peace is titled “Against War – Building a Culture of Peace” to the great delight amongst the culture of peace civil society organizations.

The Mayors for Peace, a multilateral organization based in Hiroshima with a membership of 8300 Mayors in 166 countries and regions have integrated “Promoting the Culture of Peace” as part of its Mission Statement in 2021.

Efforts from civil society thwarted unceremoniously

As the Founder of the Global Movement of The Culture of Peace (GMCoP), a coalition of the 18 civil society organizations advocating for the culture of peace at the UN, I had taken the initiative of meeting with the PGA77 and briefing him about the background of the HLF and the annual resolutions of the Assembly mandating the PGA to convene the Forum.

The gorgeous past programme booklets and approved UN visual identity samples were also left with him. He was kind and gracious. But unfortunately, his staff dealing with culture of peace were not. Thereafter, the civil society representatives reached out to staff responsible for the HLF but were advised to come through the relevant Member States.

I am flabbergasted finding such disdain for civil society. Civil society had collaborated and supported the OPGA since 2012. This OPGA was the most unhelpful of all to the civil society representatives.

How was the HLF-CoP initiated?

The HLF was initiated in 2012 by the 66th PGA Ambassador Nassir Al-Nasser mainly to address the weakest area of the implementation of the UN’s own Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace adopted more than two decades ago in 1999, namely the commitments by the Member States who were responsible for the adoption of the landmark resolution by consensus.

The other objective of Ambassador Al-Nasser was to build a true collaborative channel between Member States and the civil society organizations which are the strongest and most-enthusiastic about advancing the culture of peace. That was a visionary perspective put to action in initiating the HLF-CoP.

The 2019 HLF-CoP was a grand occasion convened by PGA72 María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the UN’s foundational document on culture of peace on 13 September 1999. For that, GMCoP commenced a 20th anniversary profile build-up advocacy with its other civil society partners.

Team Bangladesh fails miserably as the Culture of Peace champion

It is inconceivable when one finds the current Team Bangladesh’s disinterest in the culture of peace recalling that its predecessor Team Bangladesh took the first pioneering step on 31 July 1997 to write to the then newly elected Secretary-General Kofi Annan requesting inclusion of a new item of UNGA agenda on culture of peace.

My own voluntary guidance and attention, along with those from the civil society were extended to Teams Bangladesh and OPGAs over the years through many diverse ways that included writing the annual draft resolutions presented by Bangladesh on the culture of peace; inputs for remarks of PGAs on behalf of Bangladesh delegation; arrange funding for the travel and hospitality of keynote speakers occasionally from far off cities by arranging for resources.

All these civil society supports was shunned by the current Team Bangladesh.

Since 1996, the culture of peace became the flagship initiative of Bangladesh. Its leadership role on the culture of peace was recognized by PGA67 inviting Bangladesh Foreign Minister to chair the HLF-CoP in his place. Two Foreign Ministers and Ministerial level representatives of Bangladesh spoke at the Forum’s Panel Discussion on different occasions.

One wonders how this cold shoulder could be given to the culture of peace without instructions from the capital. Leadership of the Government of Bangladesh back home continue its whole-hearted support and encouragement to the long-standing high-profile role of Bangladesh on the culture of peace.

At the truncated HLF-CoP on 14 June 2023, Team Bangladesh obtained the lowest number of co-sponsors which had no countries of Europe or US. Lowest number also for the speakers and again no country from Europe spoke.

OPGA needs transparency and streamlining

One wonders why OPGA is so dismissive of the initiatives and of the valuable suggestions offered by the civil society.

In fact, OPGA has become another layer of UN bureaucracy. That is of a hybrid kind invoking that it works for the Member States through PGA leadership while reaching out to the Secretariat for all types of support and assistance.

Before this current structure of OPGA with 20+ support staff commenced some years ago, UN’s Department of General Assembly and Conference Management (DGACM) was managing everything smoothly and efficiently. Now it spends most of the time convincing the OPGA staff who wants to assert the primacy of the PGA in the affairs of GA.

When Bangladesh Foreign Minister was PGA in 1986, I was his Special Assistant with a team of three Bangladesh colleagues. The exalted title of Chief of Cabinet of PGA was not in existence at that time. Things worked well and PGA’s responsibilities were carried out successfully.

OPGA needs to be more transparent. In 1998, I recall as Chair of the UN’s Budgetary Committee, an amount of US dollars $250,000 was approved for OPGA. What is its total budget now (not just UN’s regular one but through other contributions)?

How much of that is devoted to travels for PGA and his staff? On occasions, the GA issues take a secondary position to PGA travels. Which countries second their staff to the OPGA? After all these years of the experience of ever-expanding OPGA structure, there should be an independent evaluation of its value-added benefits, if any.

Conclusion

I believe that the UN should own the culture of peace and internalize its implementation throughout the UN system. Also, Secretary-General should prioritize the culture of peace as a part of his leadership agenda. He should make good use of this workable tool that UN possess in the culture of peace programme to advance the objective of sustainable peace.

We need to remember that the culture of peace remains permanently a decision of the UNGA. No one – a PGA or an Ambassador – can obliterate it from the attention and engagement of the global community.

Any cursorily organized, hurriedly-put-together, mandate-obligated arrangements for the HLF-CoP now would not get the trust and confidence of the culture of peace community, more so that of the GMCoP.

Keeping in mind the experience the role played by OPGA and Team Bangladesh during the 77th UNGA session, we hope there will be a better experience at the 78th session which commences in two weeks.

The Culture of Peace is not a quick fix. It is a movement, not a revolution!

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Chair of the nine-month-long negotiations resulting in the consensus as mandated by UN General Assembly and presenter of the agreed text of this document (A/RES/53/243) for adoption by the Assembly; Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN (1996-2001); UN Under-Secretary-General (2002-2007).

IPS UN Bureau

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By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 22 2023 – “I thought of studying journalism, because of the example of Gloria Maria,” a famous black TV journalist who died of cancer in February 2023, said mathematician Luciana Elias, while discussing the scarce female participation in exact sciences research in Brazil.

“There are no visible examples, female role models in scientific research, where there are white men, not women, let alone black women,” she said. This lack of representation blocks girls’ access from childhood to academic careers that are still perceived as “masculine,” the 52-year-old professor pointed out.”There are no visible examples, female role models in scientific research, where there are white men, not women, let alone black women.” Luciana Elias

Because she loved mathematics, Elias followed her vocation. She graduated in 1995, and earned a master’s degree and doctorate in exact mathematics at several Brazilian universities, later becoming a professor of this pure science at the Federal University of Jataí.

“At the graduation ceremony, there were only three women and I was the only black woman,” she told IPS by telephone from Jataí, a city of 105,000 people in the midwest Brazilian state of Goiás.

Women have excelled in educational advancement in Brazil, a country of just over 203 million people. In 1970 they made up only 25.6 percent of Brazilians graduating from university. By the year 2000 they represented 52.8 percent. This trend has continued, although at a slower pace.

Lagging behind in mathematics

But in mathematics, applied and computational mathematics and statistics, there was a small reduction in female participation between 2009 and 2019, according to a special bulletin released in May by the Gender and Diversity Commission of the Brazilian Societies of Mathematics (SBM) and Applied and Computational Mathematics (SBMAC).

From 53 percent of female graduates in 2009, the proportion dropped to 47 percent in 2019.

The percentage of women is even lower in the so-called baccalaureate, which in Brazil refers to a bachelor’s degree required to practice a profession, while a different kind of bachelor’s degree trains future professors.

Female baccalaureate degree holders in mathematics and related fields dropped from 43 percent to 37 percent between 2009 and 2019, according to the study, while those graduating specifically to teach dropped from 55 percent to 48 percent in the same period.

In computer science the situation is worse: “I know a student who was the only woman in her group of 40 students at graduation,” said Marilaine Colnago, PhD in computational mathematics and professor of that discipline at the Paulista State University (UNESP) in Araraquara, a city of 242,000 inhabitants in the state of São Paulo.

“Many female students drop out because they feel isolated,” she lamented, saying that the lack of women in careers such as engineering and computer science is the first barrier to women’s entry into universities to take courses in the exact sciences.

“There were many women in the beginning, when there were only the big computers, for calculations and secretarial services. Then, with personal computers and advances in computing, it became a purely male area,” said Colnago, the head of SBMAC’s “Women in Applied and Computational Mathematics” committee.

Women have been a majority in Brazilian universities since the end of the last century. But in addition to being a minority in higher income professions, such as engineering and computer science, they suffer from the so-called “scissors effect”, which prevents them from moving up the career ladder, especially in scientific research.

“At graduation, we make up about half of the students; at the doctoral level, women are down to 20 percent,” said Colnago, 34.

Luciana Elias is a professor of exact mathematics, a discipline in which she holds a PhD, at the Federal University of Jataí in midwest Brazil. She represents a small minority in pure science, especially in mathematics, where women have a scarce presence and are mainly engaged in teaching primary and middle school. CREDIT: UFJ

Maternity as a stumbling block

Maternity is one of the notable factors in the low presence of women in research. The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, electrical engineer Luciana Santos, the first woman to hold this position in the country, announced that she would promote “affirmative action” to ensure postgraduate scholarships for women scientists.

In addition to specific resources for women researchers equivalent to 20 million dollars over the next four years, she promised to modify the criteria for scholarships, respecting, for example, the question of maternity.

Until now, pregnant women lose points for productivity-based scholarships, because their evaluation considers the period of pregnancy and maternity leave as an interruption of their work.

Women researchers are faced with the dilemma between motherhood and a career, since the still dominant culture assigns women to care work and teaching, which is less well paid. They are also in the majority in nursing, but in the minority among physicians.

Added to that are “invisible barriers,” such as sexual harassment, a male environment with its prejudices, jokes and the silencing of female voices.

There have been advances in combating these issues, which previously “could not be spoken up about,” but they continue to hinder the promotion of women in the academic world, said Colnago, who is married and has no children.

She personally felt the difference in treatment between the master’s degree, where she had an understanding and friendly adviser, and the PhD that she earned in a more masculine world, as it was in computer science, “where there is different treatment for men and women.”

A meeting in Brasilia of the rectors of Brazil’s public universities with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which shows that most of the top university authorities are men, despite the fact that the majority of the university population is female. Luciana Santos, the first woman to hold the post of Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, next to the president in the foreground, represents a hope for a greater female presence in the exact sciences. CREDIT: Ricardo Stuckert / PR

Losses

“Scientific research, like all innovation projects, loses the diversity of views, the different visions of gender and race, which are fundamental,” by excluding a more effective participation of women and different ethnicities, said the professor of computational mathematics in the chemistry course at UNESP.

“We are losing female researchers with good projects because they see motherhood as a negative and because of a lack of incentives and public policies,” Colnago complained.

It is necessary to give visibility to female advances in the scientific area, to highlight women who made good contributions to science “that will inspire other women to follow their vocations,” she said.

This is what the SBM/SBMAC Gender and Diversity Commission, created in 2019, seeks in order to reduce gender differences and promote the diversity of actors in mathematics in Brazil.

A positive measure taken by SBMAC at its annual congresses was to set up a space to care for the children of the participants, so that their fathers and mothers could have equal conditions to discuss the topics of their work.

In Elias’s view, the first step, already partially accomplished with the bulletin on “gender and race” in mathematics, is to recognize existing gender disparities in the exact sciences.

The next would be to propose “institutional, public” actions to overcome inequalities, dismantle the myth that “men are more capable,” disseminate positive examples of women, and increase forums for debate on the subject.

It is also necessary to reduce regional imbalances, the professor said, pointing out that her city, Jatai, is more than 300 kilometers from an airport and has few resources to promote science.

“Society is losing brilliant minds that fail to fulfill their vocations and Brazil is giving up potential intellectuals” by failing to address gender and racial inequalities in scientific development as it should, she argued.

By Francis Kokutse
ACCRA, Aug 22 2023 – The war in Tigray, northern Ethiopian, led to sexual and gender-based violence against women, but when Hilina Berhanu Degefa, researcher, gender policy expert and co-founder of the Yellow Movement AAU, appeared before the UN Security Council Open Debate on Sexual Violence in Conflict last year, and catalogued the problems that the victims of the war faced, it didn’t shock the world.

Giving a background, Degefa said, “When the war first started, Blen, a 21-year-old waitress from Badme, along with around 30 other Tigrayan women, was held against her will and subjected to sexual slavery, starvation, and gang rape by a group of Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers who took turns with her.”

“I documented many other stories like Blen’s during multiple visits to the Tigray region before June 2021. Sexual violence was used to terrorize communities and build camaraderie amongst allied forces of the Eritrean Defence Forces, Ethiopian National Defence Force, Amhara regional militia, and special forces through the shared experience of exploiting women’s bodies.

“The consistency across victims’ accounts shows that these crimes were committed with a degree of organization, planning, and intent to dehumanize individuals and communities,” she said.

Now, a new study has confirmed that 99 percent of the survivors of sexual and gender-based violence during the conflict have not received medical or psychological care because most health facilities were destroyed and looted.

Girmatsion Fisseha – Lead Author

The authors have, therefore, suggested the establishment of an urgent survivor centre approach with medical and psychological services, together with sustained community support, to reduce the lifelong impact on the behavioural, emotional, sexual, social, and economic fortunes of the victims.

Published by BMJ Global Health journal, the study, “War-related sexual and gender-based violence in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia: a community-based study,” is a survey conducted in six zones of Tigray after the Eritrean, Ethiopian and Amhara forces left Mekelle, the capital of Tigray.

The western zone of Tigray and the districts bordering Eritrea were not included for security reasons. Women of reproductive age (i.e., 15–49 years) recruited from the study communities were included as primary respondents in this survey. Information on girls under 15 years and women above 50 years of age was also collected from the primary respondents, and the period of the SGBV incidents covered from 4 November 2020 to 28 June 2021.

Findings from this study indicate a higher incidence, nearly 10 percent more of rape, than those reported in other studies during conflicts, such as in Northern Uganda, 4.2 percent; Sierra Leone, 8 percent and Ukraine, 2.6 percent. In the case of physical violence, 28.6 percent observed in this study was higher than the findings for East Timor, Indonesia, where 22.7 percent of the women were physically assaulted.

Co-author of the study, Kiros Berhane, professor at the Cynthia and Robert Citron-Roslyn and Leslie Goldstein, and Chair, Department of Biostatistics Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University in the U.S. told the IPS why they were motivated to conduct the study. “During the war period in Tigray, there were unprecedently high incidents of SGBV reported by various humanitarian agencies, local and international media, including gang-rape and other extreme types of abuses such as insertion of foreign objectives to the victims’ private parts.

Kiros Berhane Professor of Biostatistics at Columbia University

“Most of the reports were coming from health facilities around big towns. Health professionals working at university hospitals (including many on the author list of this manuscript) observed many rape survivors admitted to Mekelle Hospital and Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital (one-stop centre),” he said.

Berhane said the main objective of the study was to scientifically and thoroughly document the level and severity of war-related SGBV in Tigray beyond the sporadic and incomplete (but still shocking) reports in hopes that policies and actions could be activated to help rape survivors and further prevent the rape incidence in the community, adding that, “this study provides first-of-its-kind objectively/carefully collected primary data on scale/level of SGBV in Tigray.”

Degefa gave a chilling account of a Tigrayan woman who was fleeing the conflict zone with her children, and encountered the Amhara militia, who separated her from her family, gang-raped her and inserted a hot metal rod into her uterus and declared that a Tigrayan should never give birth.”

“Similar incidents of rape with claims of cleansing “Tigrayan blood” and mutilating women’s bodies to prevent the birth of more generations of Tigrayans have been extensively covered by different human rights reports,” she said.

Degefa said sexual violence was also used to humiliate survivors and their families and cited a case of an Amhara woman who was beaten and raped in the presence of her husband and child by two members of Tigrayan forces. Men and boys were also sexually assaulted, she said, adding that the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission found in Samre town, in Tigray, 600 men and boys who were stripped and forcibly paraded, some completely naked, while Eritrean female soldiers mocked them and took pictures.

She said women with disabilities and other vulnerable communities were also at particular risk during this conflict. “Many women with disabilities were specifically targeted in the Tigray region as they were presumed to be fighters in the previous war. Girls, older women, and women belonging to a minority or indigenous communities also faced higher risks, Degefa added.

The lack of access to the region for independent human rights monitoring means it has been tough to document the impact of the conflict in minority communities and especially those living in disputed areas on the Eritrean border, such as the Irob and Kunama in Tigray.

In her opinion, the conflict in Northern Ethiopia, and the effective siege of the Tigray region, in particular, has undermined women’s rights, including access to reproductive healthcare and psychosocial support, exacerbating the impacts of sexual violence.

Degefa said the lack of access to psychosocial support services means that the mental health of survivors of sexual violence hangs in the balance. Many have already died by suicide, adding that the story of a 50-year-old Amhara woman from Shewa-Robit in central Ethiopia, who was gang-raped by Tigrayan fighters in the presence of her son in the next room and later died of suicide.

Following their study, Berhane said he would expect the Ethiopian government and the international community “to provide immediate action such as supporting survivors, their children and provide the opportunity for medical, psychological and economic rehabilitation.”

In addition, there is a need for the supply of adequate medical supplies and medications to health facilities in the war zone. The government must also work with all partners and NGOs to try and trace survivors at the community level for further medical and psychological support.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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