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Conference of The European Network For Peace And Human Rights, Brussels, 20/21 October 2005
by Paul Clifford and Diana Francis
Introduction
We attended this conference, organised by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and held in the European Parliament, on behalf of CCTS. It was attended by over 100 people, not only from Europe but from around the world. They were mainly from single issue campaigning organisations but there were also representatives from the European Parliament and broad based organisations such as the Quaker Council for European Affairs.
For all plenary sessions and some workshops there was simultaneous translation into a number of European languages. The layout of the conference room and some of the workshop rooms was not conducive to interaction between participants and most sessions took the form of speeches from the front followed by contributions from participants on their own area of interest. There was therefore not much dialogue between participants in the formal sessions, though of course conversations took place during breaks and over meals.
Opening session
The first day opened with a plenary session and welcome, followed by presentations from people who would be leading workshops, designed to help participants decide which workshop they wished to attend.
There were then brief presentations by Peacerights and Public Interest Lawyers on the illegality of ‘preventive attack’ and unilateral military action in Iraq. The main thrust of these was that this illegal war was, in effect, ‘legalised’ by the UN Security Council when it condoned the illegal occupation. Thus the UN Security Council is legalising actions which would otherwise be illegal. This needs to stop.
Then Senator Pierre Galand spoke about Palestine, where, he said, international law has been turned upside down. The International Court issued an opinion that Israel should dismantle the ‘separation wall’ and the UN decided that Israel should be forced to abide by the opinion, but nothing has been done to enforce this. At a UN Special Assembly meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was received as a ‘promoter of peace’. The European Social Forum is attempting to get European Governments to take action against Israel. An International Tribunal is being set up in support of Palestine (not against Israel) in co-operation with the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
We decided to attend different workshops to maximise our experience of the conference. Their titles are given below, with summaries of their contents.
The crisis in civil liberties and human rights
This workshop was led by Tony Bunyan from Statewatch. There were also contributions from the platform by representatives of The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Save Omar Deghayes Campaign (he is a British resident imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay), and a presentation by Jean Bricmont, a Belgian academic, on the conflict between Human Rights and Peace.
Tony Bunyan argued that technology has progressed to the point where it is possible to track all of us all of the time. Protection is needed against abuse of this ability. We are moving towards surveillance societies.
The view of the ACLU is that the ‘War on Terror’ is not pursuing specific individuals but is putting out a dragnet that is making us all suspects. Peace activists should be concerned, since what is aimed at ‘terrorists’ today will be aimed at peace activists tomorrow.
Omar Deghayes is a British resident of Libyan citizenship, who married an Afghan woman. He was in Afghanistan on September 11th 2001 and fled to Pakistan, where he was picked up by ‘security forces’ and transferred to Camp Delta. The British government does nothing for him, arguing that he is only a British resident, not a citizen. He, like all other prisoners there, is kept in inhuman conditions. In ACLU’s view, what goes on at Guantanamo Bay is not only against International Law but also against US Domestic Law.
Jean Bricmont posed the question ‘Is there an inherent conflict between Human Rights and Peace?’ Unilateral ‘humanitarian’ intervention on issues of human rights can be in direct opposition to peace. This is illustrated by the invasion of Iraq, which is now argued to have been undertaken ‘to bring about democracy’. Only the powerful are going to intervene in such ways and will do so to their own agenda.
From the floor, some participants urged that groups working on different concerns should make links and co-operate, not simply focus on single issues. Amnesty International is now focussing on social, economic and development rights, as well as on political rights.
In response to a question about what could be done, various kinds of action were identified: making demands to governments about Human Rights; getting the message out to the general public and putting pressure on the media to highlight human rights abuses; campaigning and lobbying at the European level.
Making Europe nuclear-weapons-free
This workshop was organised by Abolition 2000. It was focussed on ways of building broad support for nuclear disarmament in Europe. This would entail a big educational push, informing people about the whole nuclear chain and the ‘victims at every link’. A variety of campaigning strategies and methods were proposed: use of the Mayors for Peace initiative; boycotts of companies implicated in the nuclear chain, and shareholder actions; exchange of activists and expertise; replicating and publicising each other’s actions; holding parallel actions on internationally significant dates, such as the 60th anniversary of the Nuremburg judgements (1st October 2006); and holding citizens’ tribunals on nuclear weapons.
US military bases around the world
The analysis of this workshop was that the purpose of US military bases around the world was to enforce US global dominance, particularly in energy-rich areas. Bases were used to encircle enemies – recent developments focussing on China and Iran.
Quite apart from the bases that house US military personnel and hardware, there are those that service its aircraft carriers and the like. There are also those used for training, which can become jumping off points for attack, and command, control and intelligence bases. Sometimes a very tiny base – in Iceland or Tadjikistan – is established for the purpose of ‘flying the flag’. Joint exercises were used to bind countries into US strategies and policies, even where they did not accept bases. Now the US has its sights on space and the development of a ‘moon-earth space well’.
There is a No Bases Global Network and both they and a researcher called Catherine Letz have amassed data on the number and location of bases – though no doubt some remain secret. There is resistance to US bases in many places, often stimulated by the environmental and human abuses associated with them: the seizure of land; low flying and firing exercises; sexual harassment and violence by troops. Resistance can be motivated both by nationalism and internationalism.
The role of the United Nations in strengthening international peace and security
This workshop was led by Vijay Mehta from Action for UN renewal. He identified two key events for the UN in recent times. The first was the invasion of Iraq and the second was the World Summit.
In the invasion of Iraq the UN was marginalised. Afterwards, Kofi Annan set up a high level committee to look at key challenges for the UN. It produced a report with over 100 recommendations on areas such as security, environmental issues, terrorism, civil war, the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and organised crime. It identified the need for working together free from undue influence by any member state, in an interdependent way, using a multilateral approach.
The World Summit, among other things, established a Peacebuilding Commission, focussed on post conflict rebuilding and reconciliation in ‘failed states’. Its membership will include Security Council members, the World Bank, the IMF, the EU and the AU, but not NGOs. It is due to start work by the end of this year and will be funded by voluntary contributions. The Human Rights Council will be re-vamped and the Millennium goals were re-stated.
However, the reform of the Security Council itself was put off; no progress was made on disarmament; there was a failure to agree on a strategy to counter non-state terrorism and there was no detailed discussion on health issues such as HIV/AIDS.
The war on Iraq
This workshop was led by Ayse Berktay of the World Tribunal on Iraq and focussed on the work of the World Tribunal. A number of conclusions were reached:
- The resistance of the people of Iraq is legitimate.
- No support should be given to the illegal occupiers.
- Under law, none of the ‘legal’ things happening now, e.g., the constitution and elections are legal.
- The work of the world Tribunal on Iraq should continue for as long as the occupation lasts.
We learned of these conclusions only in the final plenary. Neither of us was present in this workshop. Had we been, we might well have questioned some of the assumptions and views of the presenter and other participants.
Concluding plenary
The concluding plenary comprised some remarks by the organisers, reports from the workshops, a few comments from the floor and concluding remarks by Caroline Lucas, MEP. Caroline stated that the European Parliament is doing more than it was on peace issues. She and others have been working on the Non Proliferation Treaty and on issues related to the demobilisation of US bases in Europe. They have been promoting the ‘Mayors for Peace’ campaign, and there have been vigorous debates about the need to balance actions against non-state terrorism with the protection of civil liberties. She considers it important to work on these issues in Europe and at the same time finds it very frustrating. Europe is well placed to be a counterweight to US hegemony but there are forces within the EU that have a different agenda. There is a need to define what we mean by security and the way this is understood needs to be broadened beyond the military. There is also a need to focus on environmental issues and energy efficiency. Key challenges for the Peace Movement are to develop a clear vision of the kind of world we want to live in and to continue to engage the people who came out and marched against the Iraq war.
Our evaluation
Overall, we found that the conference was useful, if patchy. The format of presentation from the front and responses, rather than dialogue, is not one we would have chosen. Nonetheless, some of the information and ideas that were exchanged were useful and stimulating. And we made some useful contacts amongst like-minded people and there may be a possible connection between CCTS and the Quaker Centre for European Affairs*.
*The Quaker Centre for European Affairs was founded in 1979. It works to express a Quaker vision in matters of peace, human rights and economic justice in the European context. It was instrumental in establishing the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO), representing NGOs in Europe which ‘aim to promote sustainable peacebuilding policies among decision-makers in the EU.
Paul Clifford & Diana Francis
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