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Women Need Political Space for Peacemaking

Written by Ashfaq Yusufzai
Friday, 29 January 2010
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 25, 2010 (IPS) - As a political activist and president of the women’s wing of the Awami National Party (ANP), Zahira Khattak has been working relentlessly for the empowerment of women in the war-torn North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan. She believes that by empowering them, they can contribute more to the peace efforts in the region. "We are holding a peace jirga in the near future in which women from the whole province will be invited to speak on the prevailing situation," Khattak said, referring to the spate of violence in the NWFP, one of Pakistan’s four provinces. Women have also been providing comfort to the bereaved families of the victims of militant attacks in NWFP, she said. When a suicide blast killed 34 people in Charsadda district in the NWFP in November 2009, the female members of the ANP, including the parliamentarians, offered prayers for the victims to embolden the people, she said. ANP’s women also visit the sites of bomb blasts and houses of the slain victims to encourage their families.
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The Journalists' Burden

Written by Shaheen Buneri
Friday, 29 January 2010
When society is passing through a transitional period, and centuries-old social and cultural institutions are razed to the ground, journalists are left with no option but to cover misery, death and destruction. From Swat to Waziristan, the area is in the grip of unprecedented violence and journalists carry the heavy burden of reporting each and every incident in great detail. The tragedy is that the majority of the journalists reporting from the conflict zones are not trained in the techniques of conflict reporting and safety measures. News channels are in a rush to break news. In the wake of the media boom in Pakistan, about 50 TV channels are in competition to inform the bewildered population before any other competitor takes the lead. Lost in this frenzy are the needs of journalists, more than 10 of whom have been killed in the line of duty over the past two years.
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Muslim Youth Work Toward Peace in Mindanao

Written by IRIN
Friday, 29 January 2010
MANILA, 14 January 2010 (IRIN) - With its mosques, colourful buildings and veiled girls going to Madrasa schools, Maharlika village resembles a Mindanao town rather than a Manila suburb. Established as a government housing project by the National Housing Authority (NHA) in the 1970s, Maharlika village has become a favoured destination in the capital for Muslims fleeing the conflict. "My family came to Manila to escape war in Maguindanao [province]. Here in Maharlika Village, we are among fellow Muslims," Al-hesam Ebrahim, 19, told IRIN. Ebrahim's parents fled Mindanao years ago. A student of architectural engineering and technology at the Technology University of the Philippines, Ebrahim says, "Years from now, I want to be famous for building houses, bridges and buildings." But Ebrahim also dreams of returning to Mindanao where many of his relatives remain, their lives marked by constant displacement and uncertainty.
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Can Violence Truly Defend Islam?

Written by Mustafa Akyol
Friday, 29 January 2010
Istanbul, Turkey - Alas, it happened again. An extremist Muslim attacked a Westerner to punish him for mocking Islam. This time, the victim was the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose controversial caricature of the Prophet Muhammad had sparked a worldwide storm five years ago. A 28-year-old man of Somali origin broke into the cartoonist’s home a few weeks ago, wielding an axe and a knife. “We will get our revenge,” he reportedly yelled, before being shot by the police and taken into custody. Westergaard, who had the chance to run into the “panic room” in his house, luckily survived. And I hope he will not face anything like this again. As a Muslim, I too had found his caricature, which depicted the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a fuse, offensive. But I also believe that being offended by someone does not give you the right to attack him or her.
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Climate: Global Economic Apartheid is Obstacle to Fair Deal

Written by Claudia Ciobanu
Friday, 18 December 2009
COPENHAGEN, Dec 17 (IPS) - "Climate change is an opportunity to deal with all the issues of equity and justice that we have been struggling for all along," said Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International in an interview with IPS on Thursday in Copenhagen. "And perhaps this is why there is such resistance from rich countries: they know that if they do the right thing in Copenhagen, they have to begin to share economic power and to have a more equitable trading system because all of those things have to follow, otherwise you cannot deal with climate change." Q: With less than two days before the end of negotiations in Copenhagen, world leaders seem reluctant to commit to a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal. Why? A: I think that developed countries are still in denial about their responsibility, even if they formally acknowledge it. The bottom line is we have global economic apartheid and essentially what we are seeing here is a sort of climate apartheid.
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