Fiji’s NGO Coalition on Human Rights has called for stronger accountability and commitment to human rights at home in response to the country taking the world stage as the head of a UN body.

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) elected Fiji’s ambassador Nazhat Shameem as its 2021 president on Friday.

“As the president of the UNHCR, Fiji now faces global scrutiny on our human rights obligations,” said the NGOCHR chair Nalini Singh in a statement.

“This is a welcome opportunity for Fiji to reflect on our progress and the existing human rights concerns that need to be addressed.”

It was encouraging to witness a small Pacific island nation like Fiji taking the lead at a global forum and representing key regional human rights issues, she said.

“It is also a critical time for the Pacific and Fiji, as we see the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic exacerbating human rights issues in the region.

Fiji ‘must act over justice’
“With Fiji’s new appointment, our government must act to ensure that human rights and the principles of equality and justice are upheld across all sectors,” said Singh.

A recent concern has been cases of alleged police brutality that have been raised by the NGOCHR.

The NGOCHR has reaffirmed that there must be “no rollback of human rights” under the guise of response measures and continues to raise concerns on the arrests of Fiji citizens during the nation-wide curfew.

“We are at the world stage taking a strong stance on human rights but we must walk the talk here at home and set the example,” said Singh.

Fiji’s selection as the President of the UNHCR is a step forward in the right direction and we must keep this momentum to foster a culture that promotes and protects human rights, justice and democracy.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The notion that the covid-19 pandemic was “the great equalizer’ should be dead and buried by now. If anything, the lethal disease is another terrible reminder of the deep divisions and inequalities in our societies.

That said, the treatment of the disease should not be a repeat of the same shameful scenario.

For an entire year, wealthy celebrities and government officials have been reminding us that “we are in this together”, that “we are on the same boat”, with the likes of US singer, Madonna, speaking from her mansion while submerged in a “milky bath sprinkled with rose petals,” telling us that the pandemic has proved to be the “great equalizer”.

“Like I used to say at the end of ‘Human Nature’ every night, we are all in the same boat,” she said. “And if the ship goes down, we’re all going down together,” CNN reported at the time.

Such statements, like that of Madonna, and Ellen DeGeneres as well, have generated much media attention not just because they are both famous people with a massive social media following but also because of the obvious hypocrisy in their empty rhetoric.

In truth, however, they were only repeating the standard procedure followed by governments, celebrities and wealthy “influencers” worldwide.

But are we, really, “all in this together”? With unemployment rates skyrocketing across the globe, hundreds of millions scraping by to feed their children, multitudes of nameless and hapless families chugging along without access to proper healthcare, subsisting on hope and a prayer so that they may survive the scourges of poverty – let alone the pandemic – one cannot, with a clear conscience, make such outrageous claims.

Not only are we not “on the same boat” but, certainly, we have never been. According to World Bank data, nearly half of the world lives on less than US$5.5 a day. This dismal statistic is part of a remarkable trajectory of inequality that has afflicted humanity for a long time.

The plight of many of the world’s poor is compounded in the case of war refugees, the double victims of state terrorism and violence and the unwillingness of those with the resources to step forward and pay back some of their largely undeserved wealth.

The boat metaphor is particularly interesting in the case of refugees; millions of them have desperately tried to escape the infernos of war and poverty in rickety boats and dinghies, hoping to get across from their stricken regions to safer places.

Sadly familiar sight
This sight has sadly grown familiar in recent years not only throughout the Mediterranean Sea but also in other bodies of water around the world, especially in Burma, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have tried to escape their ongoing genocide. Thousands of them have drowned in the Bay of Bengal.

The covid-19 pandemic has accentuated and, in fact, accelerated the sharp inequalities that exist in every society individually, and the world at large. According to a June 2020 study conducted in the United States by the Brookings Institute, the number of deaths as a result of the disease reflects a clear racial logic.

Many indicators included in the study leave no doubt that racism is a central factor in the life cycle of covid.

For example, among those aged between 45 and 54 years, “Black and Hispanic/Latino death rates are at least six times higher than for whites”. Although whites make up 62 percent of the US population of that specific age group, only 22 percent of the total deaths were white.

Black and Latino communities were the most devastated.

According to this and other studies, the main assumption behind the discrepancy of infection and death rates resulting from covid among various racial groups in the US is poverty which is, itself, an expression of racial inequality. The poor have no, or limited, access to proper healthcare. For the rich, this factor is of little relevance.

Moreover, poor communities tend to work in low-paying jobs in the service sector, where social distancing is nearly impossible. With little government support to help them survive the lockdowns, they do everything within their power to provide for their children, only to be infected by the virus or, worse, die.

Iniquity expected to continue
This iniquity is expected to continue even in the way that the vaccines are made available. While several Western nations have either launched or scheduled their vaccination campaigns, the poorest nations on earth are expected to wait for a long time before life-saving vaccines are made available.

In 67 poor or developing countries located mostly in Africa and the Southern hemisphere, only one out of ten individuals will likely receive the vaccine by the end of 2020, the Fortune Magazine website reported.

The disturbing report cited a study conducted by a humanitarian and rights coalition, the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA), which includes Oxfam and Amnesty International.

If there is such a thing as a strategy at this point, it is the deplorable “hoarding” of the vaccine by rich nations.

Dr Mohga Kamal-Yanni of the PVA put this realisation into perspective when she said that “rich countries have enough doses to vaccinate everyone nearly three times over, while poor countries don’t even have enough to reach health workers and people at risk”.

So much for the numerous conferences touting the need for a “global response” to the disease.

But it does not have to be this way.

While it is likely that class, race and gender inequalities will continue to ravage human societies after the pandemic, as they did before, it is also possible for governments to use this collective tragedy as an opportunity to bridge the inequality gap, even if just a little, as a starting point to imagine a more equitable future for all of us.

Poor, dark-skinned people should not be made to die when their lives can be saved by a simple vaccine, which is available in abundance.

Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). This article is republished with permission. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Indigenous people fought alongside youth movements in the creation of an Indonesian nation. But, in the historical writing of Indonesia’s struggle for independence from colonial powers, stories of Indigenous people’s role are nearly non-existent compared to that of the elite educated youth leaders.

This lack of representation reflects the marginalisation of Indigenous peoples, which continued throughout Indonesia’s 75 years of independence.

Indigenous people, whose traditional knowledge and way of life proved to be a force to be reckoned with during the current covid-19 pandemic and who for generations serve as guardians of forests and natural environments, continue to be stigmatised and experience oppression in their own country.

Nearly 20 million, out of a total of 268 million Indonesians, Indigenous peoples are often being associated with “dirty, primitive, underdeveloped, alien, to forest encroacher.”

The stigma resulted in them being underrepresented, either economically, socially, politically, and culturally.

In addition, these communities suffered oppression from the government’s economic driven investment, evicting them from their customary lands to make way for large scale forestry, mining, and plantations.

Freedom fighters
History books barely mention how Indigenous peoples took arms with the Youth movement during the struggle for independence and helped to finally established the Republic of Indonesia.

Rukka Sombolinggi, who comes from the Toraja tribe in South Sulawesi, recalled the experience of her own family. She said that her great grandfather and grandfather were freedom fighters who fought along with students.

Rukka is the secretary-general of the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN). The alliance currently represents 2366 indigenous communities throughout Indonesia or more than 18 million individual members.

“My grandfather died as a veteran. The history might not have recorded Indigenous Peoples’ roles for fighting the colonialism, but there were hundreds of thousands of them who died in the wars. Unfortunately, history recorded only the youths movements,” said Sombolinggi.

Sandra Moniaga, a Commissioner for Assessment and Research at the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM), said the majority of Indigenous Peoples, such as Sedulur Sikep in Java, were among the groups who rejected to collaborate with the Dutch colonialists.

Moniaga added that Indigenous peoples have a unique contribution to Indonesia’s struggle for independence. “They preserve Indonesia’s local cultures, protecting our identity as a nation known with hundreds of tribes and cultures,” she said.

Forest guardians
Most of Indigenous peoples’ customary lands are within and near the country’s forests. They play a huge role in protecting the country’s forest and natural environment.

In her recent study about the Marind-Anim Indigenous Peoples in Merauke Regency, Papua Province, anthropologist Sophie Chao who has been living among them for more than a decade, mentioned how the tribe is “caring for the forest, respectable to plants and animals, and nourishing relationships with the natural world”.

Under the administration of Indonesia’s first president Sukarno, Indigenous peoples got their recognition through the State’ agrarian law in 1960.

The law was the first to mention Indigenous peoples. But it stipulates that customary law applies as long as it aligns with national and State interests.

After Soeharto took power in 1966, there was systematic destruction on customary rights during the New Order, according to Sandra.

She said that the government carried out land-grabbing by issuing forest permits on customary lands for forestry, mining and large scale plantations.

“Most of these customary lands were also claimed by the government to be handed over to migrants and TNI (the army) or the police,” she added.

Towards recognition of Indigenous rights
Things started to change for Indigenous peoples in following the end of Soeharto’s rule in 1998.

The 4th Amendment of the 1945 Constitution enacted in 2000 acknowledged their “traditional existence” and “traditional way of life”.

This became the legal basis for the Constitutional Court to rule out customary lands (Hutan Adat) as State’s forests in 2012, or locally known as MK35.

Another progress, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had revived the Indigenous Peoples Bill, which will strengthen Indigenous peoples’ existence in the Republic and to resolve ongoing conflicts related to customary lands.

“Still, it is difficult to realise these regulations. Instead of RUU MHA (Indigenous Peoples Bill), the government and lawmakers are more eager to pass the Omnibus Law on Job Creation,” slammed Rukka Sombolinggi.

She said currently, Indigenous peoples are facing another form of “colonialism”. Since decentralisation in 2001, the regents and governors were the ones issuing permits over Customary Forest without their consent.

“We are no longer fighting foreign companies, but locals, like the bupati (head of regent), the governor. Their own people,” she said citing Sukarno’s famous speech: “My struggle was easier because it was to expel the colonialists, but yours will be more difficult because it is against your own people.”

Moving forward
During the pandemic, Indigenous peoples that are still practising their traditional knowledge are considered to be the most resilient groups because of their closeness to nature.

“Indigenous peoples who are guarding their areas and not massively exploited their resources and have the spirit of sharing, they have strong resilience against this pandemic. They can even provide their own food,” said Rukka Sombolinggi.

Meanwhile, those who are exposed to modernisation or in conflict with the industries suffer from unemployment, food security, and lacking in health, clean water and sanitation access.

“The claim and promises from big corporations to provide food, open access to education, or employment, they are now becoming helpless due to the characteristic of the virus,” Sombolinggi added.

Sophie Chao admired the courage, resilience, endurance, and creativity of Indigenous Peoples, in general, in the face of ongoing threats to their lands and ways of life.

“For me, my hope is that the cultures and values of Indigenous Peoples will be fully recognised, protected, and promoted by the Indonesian state and by the international community,” said Chao.

“This means making sure that their rights to land are guaranteed, that their full consent is sought where development projects are being planned, and their development takes place in a bottom-up way, based on Masyarakat Adat‘s own aspirations, dreams, and hopes.”

Rukka Sombolinggi, secretary-general of the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN), and Sandra Moniaga, a Commissioner for Assesment and Research at the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM) were interviewed for this article, part of a series to commemorate Indonesian Independence Day on August 17. Fidelis Eka Satriastanti is editor of Lingkungan Hidup, The Conversation. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Helen Twose in Auckland

Auckland University of Technology’s Gender and Diversity Research Group has reached a significant milestone, celebrating 10 years of research and debate on gender and diversity issues within the community.

Formed in 2007 with the aim of establishing a network of researchers within (and beyond) AUT who share an interest in gender and diversity, the research group has developed a thriving research community the institution and internationally through an active research programme of applied and theoretical research, and contributing to new approaches to gender and diversity research in the academic community.

The group commemorated the significant milestone with a research day that included reflection and looking backwards as well as looking forward and imagining new futures for gender and diversity research, said Professor Judith Pringle, founder of the Gender and Diversity Research Group.

“Particularly pleasing was the high attendance from a broad range of people, from academics to those outside the university, including business community and NGOs, who have a very high commitment to reducing inequality among groups, organisations and society,” Professor Pringle said.

Beginning with a keynote from Professor Pringle looking at the evolution of gender and diversity research over the last 30 years, which has fed into the strong establishment of gender and diversity research at AUT, the day included an in-depth discussion from emerging scholars looking at the importance of Māori research and knowledge and its place in academia, the #MeToo movement, and the role of arts in gender and diversity research.

Turning to the future, the group envisioned an “ideal” world without gender and diversity inequality, and how to get there. In the words of one participant: “My two favourite ideas I took from the day are the need to build strong networks within your community of work and the re-imagining of research”.

Event organisers, Dr Katherine Ravenswood and Dr Barbara Myers, said that while the group’s success and longevity was significant – especially in an environment which has seen the demise of Women’s Studies programmes and research groups at universities in New Zealand – it was also confronting.

Valuing Te Ao Māori research
In spite of increased attention to issues of discrimination, the topics addressed on the day, such as sexual harassment, the valuing and contribution of Te Ao Māori research, gendered occupational segregation and glass ceilings, were just as pertinent as 10 years ago.

“The need for the critical, brave research this research group conducts has not diminished. As participants discussed we need to continue to build communities, develop new research methodologies, and to continue to tell the stories and experiences of women from a feminist perspective,” they said.

Key research undertaken by the group includes :

• Submission on the 2017 Draft Employment (Pay Equity and Equal Pay) Bill and research into the gendered valuing of work
• Research into the careers of older women self-initiated expatriates
• Commissioned research into women’s careers in the professions, such as law
• Supporting the development of feminist teaching and research through development workshops
• Postgraduate scholarships to encourage new and emerging researchers

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz