Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies

Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland
by Diane Wolf
University of California Press; 1 edition (January 16, 2007)

Drawing on interviews with seventy Jewish men and women who, as children, were placed in non-Jewish families during the Nazi occupation of Holland, Diane L. Wolf paints a compelling portrait of Holocaust survivors whose experiences were often diametrically opposed to the experiences of those who suffered in concentration camps. Although the war years were tolerable for most of these children, it was the end of the war that marked the beginning of a traumatic time, leading many of those interviewed to remark, “My war began after the war.” This first in-depth examination of hidden children vividly brings to life their experiences before, during, and after hiding and analyzes the shifting identities, memories, and family dynamics that marked their lives from childhood through advanced age. The book is based on a narrative analysis of intensive interviews with 70 former hidden children now living in Holland, Israel and the US. Through their memories, readers are able to view their subjectivities as children and then later growing up in a post-war, post-genocidal context, into adulthood and parenthood. Although almost everyone experienced considerable trauma and still bears scars, even if their parents survived (and sometimes moreso), the vast majority of those interviewed seem resilient and have managed to create a meaningful life.
Wolf also uncovers anti-Semitism in the policies and practices of the Dutch state and the general population, which historically have been portrayed as relatively benevolent toward Jewish residents. The poignant family histories in /Beyond Anne Frank /demonstrate that we can understand the Holocaust more deeply by focusing on postwar lives. This study has implications for children and families who have suffered from war and genocide in the contemporary world as well as those who involved in adoption custody battles.

European research goes for gold
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, Berlin
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/6399157.stm

Europe has a new flagship agency to fund the brightest ideas in science.
The European Research Council (ERC) has been given a budget of 7.5bn euros (£5bn) to 2013, and will focus solely on fundamental, or “blue skies”, study.

It is hoped the initiative can find the breakthrough thinking - and eventually new products and services - to keep the EU’s economy globally competitive.

The ERC was formally inaugurated at a meeting in Berlin attended by the German Chancellor, Dr Angela Merkel.

She said the Council would become “a champion’s league for research”, giving scientists the freedom to be creative and innovative.

“We know that research and new technologies can be driving motors for a new economic dynamic, they can even provide a basis for growth in Europe, for keeping and increasing our prosperity and competitiveness,” she observed.

“We expect those who work in the research areas selected by the ERC will fulfil their potential.”

Please read the entire article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/6399157.stm.

Former U.N. Weapons Chief Says U.S., Europe and Security Council Are “Humiliating” Iran
The Associated Press
Monday, February 26, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/26/america/NA-GEN-US-Iran-Nuclear.php

NEW YORK: Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Monday the United States, Europe and the U.N. Security Council are “humiliating” Iran by demanding that it suspend uranium enrichment before any negotiations and then dictating its rewards…

Please read the entire article at http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/26/america/NA-GEN-US-Iran-Nuclear.php.

What Terrorists Need: Expanding and Deepening Louise Richardson’s Approach to Terrorism
By John McFadden

Writers as discerning as Thomas Friedman, the New York Times editorialist, and Louise Richardson, noted terrorism expert and author of “What Terrorists Want,” mention humiliation in their analyses of the causes of terrorism. Richardson even says terrorists’ feeling that we disrespect them helps drive them to desperation, and she recommends listening to their grievances as a basis for dealing with them. Similarly, in Wilson’s Ghost, international relations expert at Brown University, James Blight, and former Secretary of Defense, Robert MacNamara, recommend “deploying realistic empathy” in international conflicts. These suggestions are beyond the imagination of many Americans, because, as Richardson says, even just listening and trying to understand feels like appeasement. This automatic, intense reaction trumps all attempts to people in listening to, much less empathizing with, terrorists.
Social scientists’ and clinicians’ recent insights can help society work through this problematic reaction. Aided by seminal insights from prominent academics and clinicians who study humiliation, I have helped show why understanding feels like appeasement. It is because our impression of terrorists, like our impression of sociopaths, or people diagnosed Antisocial Personality Disorder, is that they lack remorse. Put differently, they have no feeling for their victims. Some brutal people even sneer and laugh at victims as they lay writhing in pain or dismembered and dead. So these people seem obviously are beyond the reach of reason. There is no humanity in them to appeal to. To propose reasoning with them, therefore, seems not only ridiculous but grossly irresponsible. It seems like an invitation to commit more mayhem.
To many of us who actually know and reach sociopaths, this widely believed view of people who do persistent harm no longer seems at all true. James Gilligan, the President of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy and former director of the mental health division of the Massachusetts State Department of Corrections, and others have shown that, in fact, the opposite is true. They show in compelling detail that even psychopathic serial killers are teeming with the most intense levels of shame and remorse. Their remorse is not absent. It is hidden. Moreover, all but approximately 10 to 30 percent of incarcerated criminals, the so-called true psychopaths, now seem reachable by the natural antidote to intense humiliation, or self-disrespect. They are responsive to profound expressions of respect and caring.
The problem is not that these expressions do not work for many people formerly thought unreachable. The problem is that, as Richardson implies, most people so deeply and intensely believe that terrorists are unreachable that they seem impossible to reach. How could anyone convince most people that sociopaths and terrorists actually are human beings responsive to the same things that humanize the rest of us? Researchers in favor of rehabilitation are pessimistic about the power of even the most compelling research to change what seems an almost genetically determined belief in the basically evil nature of people who harm others.
A time-honored technique for changing hearts and minds is worth considering. Perhaps nothing convinces us as well as a personal story corroborated by independently derived evidence and expert opinion. That technique has been in the forefront of attempts to change hearts and minds about alcoholics and gay and lesbian people, as well as women, children, and racial and ethnic minorities before them. When these groups were widely considered unworthy of respect, obviously respect-worthy members of them successfully challenged stereotypes. Accordingly, I have undertaken a project to demonstrate how ex-parolees success stories can change hearts and minds about criminals, especially when those stories directly challenge the lynchpin view that sociopaths lack remorse and are, therefore, unresponsive to respect and caring.
The videotaped interviews with these ex-criminals and the professionals who treated them make a compelling case that these people were forced by brutal, degrading treatment to ignore and otherwise repress their feelings of remorse and concern. And when they are treated with respect and caring and feel safe, the remorse they unconsciously felt at the time of their misdeeds is volcanic. Some of them have terrorizing flashbacks to unprovoked brutal beatings they administered to strangers “for fun.”
One young man who was amazingly brutal and laughed at his devastated victims was transformed by his counselor’s humanizing reactions to him. When he left the treatment program and committed a few burglaries and then returned, his counselor, who, importantly enough, had also been a criminal, did not lecture or otherwise humiliate him. Rather, he broke down, saying, “Where did I go wrong; help me help you.” This hardened criminal was literally awestruck by this caring, respectful reaction to his misdeeds. He experienced a catharsis. He began crying, and later explained that it was the first time in his life that he believed that someone genuinely cared about him.
Of course, this vignette, nor any series of them, is not, by itself, compelling. We are too deeply entrenched in the standard view to accept the message of this case story—that these kinds of people are reachable. But thorough exposure to this young man’s story and the corroborating evidence provided by the criminal justice system in which he was caught and the staff who helped him does enable people to seriously consider what formerly had been unthinkable.
Armed with this emerging understanding, it is easy to think of ways to expand and deepen Richardson’s approach to terrorism. Imagine the ripple effect in the Middle East and throughout Islam if the next president or any of our current prominent leaders began expressing profound sympathy for the victims of our bombs and our sanctions. Suppose Colin Powell and other retired states people followed the example of MacNamara and Blight. Imagine them forming a Coalition of the Empathic designed not only to express genuine feeling for victims but also respect, respect for the understandable aspects of the motivations of their sympathizers in terrorist and moderate Middle Eastern groups. I want a group of our leaders to say to the terrorists, “Of course you’re desperate enough to blow yourself up in the name of the brutalized people of the Middle East; you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t at least have those impulses.”
This last comment presents a vital distinction that clinicians know well. The worry about appeasing and condoning is satisfied by accurately and thoroughly empathizing with impulses, or urges, rather than the behavior itself. This is the kind of respect that clinicians who have prevented murders know well. For instance, I once advised a community jail chaplain how to react to a deeply humiliated man who was intending to blow up a department store because a manager in it had slighted him. I advised him to say, “In light of how tormented you feel, it’s no wonder that you want to destroy the manager and everything that represents him.” The chaplain reported that, after hearing these words, this man broke down crying and began seeking further sympathy for his torment. Thereafter, he never again expressed a desire to commit mayhem. The idea here again is to feel for the person’s inner nightmare as understandable motivation to commit harm.
Many commentators become obsessed with the terrorists’ other stated motivations—the triumph of Islam, the party in heaven with 72 virgins, and other grandiose, alienating motives. We should not even comment on them. They are strange distortions of more understandable aspects of their torment. But we have to convincingly show the terrorists and their sympathizers that we are human, that we can relate to their gross humiliation and general suffering. Of course, as in the case of the most damaged psychopaths, no known appeal to the sensitivities of the most damaged terrorists can work. But if we only affect moderates and some prospective recruits, the outreach would be worth the effort. Moreover, until we try to accurately and thoroughly empathize through trial and error, we really do not know how effective we can be and with whom.
Perhaps the most understandable grievance is one that Bin Laden declares prominently. It is the death during the 1990s of more than 500,000 Iraqi children because of polluted water consequent to our sanction of chlorine. This was a horrible tragedy, but there is a much more enraging fact associated with it. It at least seems that no American official has ever expressed any compelling sympathy for these victims and the families and friends who survived them. When asked about this tragedy, one of our officials in the Clinton Administration offered what seems to be the standard official comment. He replied only defensively, saying that the tragedy was Hussein’s fault. This is human relations at its worst. It is horrible enough that the deaths occurred, but as most civilized people say regarding sociopaths, the worst thing is that there is no remorse, no feeling for the victims. That is what makes us seem like monsters and what most animates terrorists’ most intense humiliated rage.
What is especially interesting to think about is how these ideas apply to the neo-con policy makers and corporation leaders the Left demonizes. Within the emerging social science view, they also are, of course, human beings rather than purely greedy, power hungry, and otherwise demonic. They too are in the grip of, for one thing, the demonizing view of terrorists; it also motivates their brutal measures. They are not just exploiting our fear of terrorists. They also truly believe their demonizing view of them. Our leaders are only ignorant of a truth that has escaped most of us, not evil. So they too are, at least in this aspect of their motivation, accessible to emerging understanding.

John McFadden (Rev.) MFT
415-722-5860
johnhughmcfadden[at]hotmail.com
I am a 65 year old ordained Presbyterian minister, a California State licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and a published journal article author. I used to be a chaplain intern in the California Youth Authority and a part-time chaplain in what was then called the California Department of Corrections. I am currently pursuing a grant to humanize people’s view of sociopaths, or hardened criminals. I circulated an article that is the basis for this grant, called, “Changing Hearts and Minds About Criminals: How Ex-Parolees Success Stories Can Enable Support for Rehabilitation,” and some prominent academics and clinicians are enthusiastically in support of this project.

Dear All!

I just fell over a conversation I had in 2002 about the looming Iraq war and the situation of the world with a good American friend. I am astonished at the actuality of our discussion. See http://www.humiliationstudies.org/whoweare/evelin02.php#loomingwar.

Most fondly!
Evelin

DIGNITY INTERNATIONAL
MONTHLY NEWSBULLETIN - January 2007

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

ALL THE BEST FOR ALL IN 2007!

Dignity News

* Torch of Human Rights – Travelling Through 4 Continents

* Building a Global Family – Annual Global Learning Programme on Human Rights in Development

Other News

* WSF – Almost There!

* Human Rights Struggles and Voices – Human Dignity and Human Rights Caucus at the 2007 WSF

* Whistling in the dark: Why the World Bank’s Latest Poverty Projections are Meaningless

* France: Housing - Finally a Legal Right?

Publications

* Kenya Land Alliance and FIDA’s New Publications on the Right to Land

* Who Benefits from GM crops? – New Report

* No Post-Tsunami Rehabilitation - Do People’s Voices Matter? The Human Right to Participation in Post-Tsunami Housing Construction

* Beyond Pragmatism: Appraising UN-Business Partnerships

Announcements

* People Before Patents: The Lives of Millions are at Stake! – Sign the Petition

* Latin America and the MDGs – A Journalism Competition

Forthcoming Events – Highlights

* At the United Nations:

Committee on the Rights of the Child – 44th Session

UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination – 70th Session

DIGNITY NEWS

*** Torch of Human Rights – Travelling Through 4 Continents! “Passing of the Torch of Struggle” was the theme given to the Torch run across different people’s settlements in Nairobi and celebration of human rights day there, in 2005, by the residents of the settlements. In 2006, this idea spread to other continents and in other Dignity programmes. The Regional Programme in Latin America in November 2006 ended with a torch ceremony as with the Annual Global Learning Programme on Human Rights in Development which took place in Malaysia from 1-10 December. The same theme was adopted by the primary schools in Alcochete, Portugal, the former home of the Dignity secretariat.

2006 LA Programme - Torch Ceremony

This symbolic gesture – that ran across Dignity’s programmes in four continents - is a sign of solidarity across continents and illustrating unity in the people’s struggle. The same theme will run across activities that Dignity will be coorganising with people’s movements at the World Social Forum in Nairobi. May the torch of human rights – shine on and shine brightly.

*** Building a Global Family – Annual Global Learning Programme on Human Rights in Development - Malaysia

Time almost stopped for the 25 participants of the 2006 Annual Global Learning Programme on Human Rights in Development as they spent 10 intensive learning, inspirational and magical days together in Malaysia with the local host Pusat KOMAS.

During the 10 days participants explored together the meaning of human rights in development work and how integration of human rights into development work translates into concrete strategies and development programming at the grassroots and international levels.

From all corners of the world they came, from countries that previously did not yet participate in the Annual Global programme including from El Salvador, Burundi, Zambia, Iran, Mongolia, and Laos. No matter what political, economic, social and cultural context they came, there was a strong feeling as belonging to the same global family with a strong commitment to human dignity and solidarity to bring about change.

“I hope we can make the difference. Long life to this group!” said one participant.

OTHER NEWS

*** WSF – Almost There!

Since the first World Social Forum (WSF) encounter in 2001, the WSF has taken the form of a permanent world process seeking and building alternatives to neo-liberal policies. The Forum’s activities will be organised around the nine general objectives, which were established on previous consultation on actions, campaigns and struggles. This year, the WSF takes place in Nairobi, Kenya from 20 to 25 January 2007. It is the first occasion on which an African country, Kenya, is serving as sole host of the WSF - a gathering which had its beginnings in the Brazilian town of Porto Alegre seven years ago.

The latest version of the WSF Programme is now already available online.

WSF: Still a Stranger to the Public Eye?

According to close to one-third of the 4800 people surveyed for “An X-Ray of Participation in the Polycentric Forum 2006″, conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis ( IBASE ), the global civil society gathering, held annually since 2001, suffers from a “lack of attention” from the media and political leaders. Other shortcomings marked by just over one-fifth of those surveyed were “division in the organisational committee” and the WSF’s “confusing political messages.”

But the fact that it offers “a forum for democratic discussion” of ideas is one of the most positive aspects of the WSF. Like “defending human rights,” that option was marked by a little over half of survey respondents, followed by “being a place to exchange experiences” and “proposing alternatives to neoliberal globalisation.”

This image of the WSF as seen by its own participants is part of the survey report that IBASE will present during the next WSF.

Source IPS – International Press Service

*** Human Rights Struggles and Voices – Human Dignity and Human Rights Caucus at the 2007 WSF

Human Rights issues have been prominent in previous editions of World Social Forum. Up till now, however, they featured mainly as a collection of events. For the World Social Forum (WSF), to be held from 20 to 25 January in Nairobi ( Kenya), they have become essential element of the Forum architecture. This through a determined effort of cooperation and coordination by a host of international, regional and Kenyan Human Rights organisations, working together in the Human Dignity and Human Rights Caucus (HDHRC) . The aim of this international group is to ensure joint planning, communication, organising and mobilising around human rights.

As an expression of new interest on Human Rights, the number of members of the HDHRC has experienced a spectacular growth. In 2007, 84 global, national and local organisations have decided to carry out their activities in the Nairobi Forum within the framework of the HDHRC. They will convene and contribute a set of more than eighty seminars, workshops, panel-discussions and cultural events on important human rights struggles, giving a voice to the people and the organisations fighting for justice in a globalising world. The local host of the Caucus is the Kenya Human Rights Network.

Rather than being internal discussions or deliberative events without engaging corrective actions, the HDHRC events will strive to set out practical objectives aiming at strengthening the human rights movement in general and demonstrating the relevance of human rights to peoples’ daily struggles.

For more information on the Caucus’ Activities, you can contact Rosa Sanchez

*** Whistling in the dark: Why the World Bank’s Latest Poverty Projections are Meaningless

The World Bank’s released recently its annual Global Economic Prospects report, which sets out the Bank’s vision of the global economy until 2030, including its latest projections for poverty. The projections from the WB and the International monetary fund (IMF) show the world, from next year onwards, will suddenly start to get better and better.

Year after year these projections have been presented. And year after year the situation is even worse than it was the year before.

Source : Choike

World Bank’s Report

*** France: Housing - Finally a Legal Right?

The plight of the homeless has become a campaign issue ahead of this year’s residential election after a group calling itself “The Children of Don Quixote” set up tents in Paris to draw attention to people sleeping outside, calling on Parisians to sleep out in the cold in solidarity. The issue has dominated the news and forced politicians from all main parties to promise more help for those without a roof over their heads.

About 86,500 people are homeless in France, according to official figures from 2001. Aid groups, however, say more than 3 million people have serious housing problems - living on the street, in shabby hotels, caravans, or in flats without bathrooms or heating. A draft law, which would enable those without decent housing to seek legal redress, should be passed by parliament before the end of February. The government has already promised more money and longer opening hours for shelters, but the Don Quixote group has said that is not enough, calling on authorities to open shelters 24 hours a day throughout the year and to build more public housing.

“We have won part of the battle, but everything will depend on how quickly these measures are implemented” - said Don Quixote’s president, Jean-Baptiste egrand.

See HIC – Habitat International Coalition

PUBLICATIONS

*** Kenya Land Alliance and FIDA’s New Publications on the Right to Land

In realisation that land defines Kenya’s socio-economic and political relations and as the most crucial factor of production, identity and solidarity, Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) in partnership with the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) – Kenya, are launching two new publications: A Policy Brief: Women, Land and Property Rights and Land Reforms in Kenya and a book: The Case for Women’s Land Rights in the Proposed New Constitution.

These publications aim to put the land and gender debate, often lost in political machinations, into perspective and present a case as to why there is need to guard against watering down or totally eliminating constitutional provisions in the Proposed New Kenyan Constitution aiming to redress gender imbalance in land ownership. It further seeks to promote women’s awareness of their land rights and encourage them to demand these rights.

KLA and FIDA Kenya are in essence presenting to the people, tools that can be used for advocacy by persons working on fighting gender discrimination on land and property rights in the country as well as other countries where women find themselves in similar discriminatory situations.

These new publication will be both released on the 19th January 2006 at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, at 10h00 am.

See Kenya Land Alliance

*** Who Benefits from GM crops? – New Report

A new report - Who Benefits from GM crops? An analysis of the global performance of genetically modified crops 1996-2006 - released by Friends of the Earth International shows that genetically modified (GM) crops have failed to address the main challenges facing farmers around the world, and more than 70% of large scale GM planting is still limited to two countries: the US and Argentina.

“No GM crop on the market today offers benefits to the consumer in terms of quality or price, and to date these crops have done nothing to alleviate hunger or poverty in Africa or elsewhere” – says Nnimmo Bassey, Friends of the Earth Africa. “The great majority of GM crops cultivated today are used as high-priced animal feed to supply rich nations with meat” - he added.

According to the report, GM crops commercialised today have on the whole increased rather than decreased pesticide use, and do not yield more than conventional varieties. The environment has not benefited from them, and GM crops will become increasingly unsustainable over the medium to long term.

Source: Choike

See: Friends of the Earth

*** No Post-Tsunami Rehabilitation - Do People’s Voices Matter? The Human Right to Participation in Post-Tsunami Housing Construction

December 26 th 2006 marked two years since the Indian Ocean tsunami ravaged several countries, destroyed thousands of lives, homes and livelihoods, and displaced millions of people. Two years later, despite the numerous actors involved and the multiple processes underway, rehabilitation is far from adequate or complete.

This Report is the latest fact-finding mission report to the tsunami-affected areas of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry highlights, published by the Housing and Land Rights Network – South Asia Regional Programme.

The report argues that there is an acute absence of people’s participation in rehabilitation processes, as well as the need for urgent adoption and implementation of human rights standards (The report asserts that one of the major failures of the government has been its abdication of responsibility in ensuring strict adherence to human rights standards and constitutional guarantees in the implementation of rehabilitation programmes. Also, the failure to include women in planning processes had resulted in gender-insensitive outcomes while violating their human rights to housing, security, privacy, participation and livelihood.

More at HIC - Habitat International Coalition

*** Beyond Pragmatism: Appraising UN-Business Partnerships

In recent years, the United Nations (UN) has emerged as one of the principal proponents of public-private partnerships (PPPs), considered by many to be a key instrument of development and an ideal to be emulated. The authors of this paper argue that idealising the concept and its normative content, as well as the feel-good discourse that infuses much of the mainstream literature, risk diverting attention away from various tensions and contradictions that characterise UN–business partnerships (UN–BPs) and that raise questions about their contribution to equitable development and democratic governance. The authors argue that if the contribution of UN–BPs to equitable development is to be adequately assessed, these diverse logics underpinning partnerships need to be identified and addressed.

Read the Paper at UNRISD (UN Research Institute for Social Development)

ANNOUNCEMENTS

*** People before patents: The Lives of Millions are at Stake!– Sign the Petition

The pharmaceutical company Novartis is taking the Indian government to court. If the company wins, millions of people across the globe could have their sources of affordable medicines dry up.

India produces affordable medicines that are vital to many people living in developing countries. Over half the medicines currently used for AIDS treatment in developing countries come from India. If Novartis is successful in its challenge against the Indian government and its patent law, more medicines are likely to be patented in India, making it very difficult for generic producers to make affordable versions of them. This could affect millions of people around the world who depend on medicines produced in India.

Tell Novartis it has no business standing in the way of people’s right to access the medicines they need. Sign the Petition to urge Novartis to DROP THE CASE against the Indian government.

Source: Medecins Sans Frontiers

Sign the Petition on-line

*** Latin America and the MDGs – A Journalism Competition

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the international news agency Inter Press Service (IPS) are calling for entries for a Journalism Competition on Latin America and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The articles submitted must be devoted to the main issues addressed by the MDGs (poverty, hunger, primary education, gender inequity and equal participation by women, maternal health and infant mortality, the fight against AIDS and other diseases, environmental sustainability), their causes and ways of overcoming them, and promoting a global partnership for development.

Articles may be submitted in Spanish, Portuguese, French or English.

Candidates should send their work and the specified documentation to IPS

Regulations and Registration Form

FORTHCOMING EVENTS – HIGHLIGHTS

*** At the United Nations:

Committee on the Rights of the Child – 44 th Session

The 44th Session of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child will take place from the 15 th January to the 2 nd February 2007, in Geneva, Switzerland. During this session, the Committee will consider state reports from Chile, Honduras, Kenya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands and Suriname. The Committee will also analyse Costa Rica’s and Kyrgyzstan’s reports on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography as well as their reports on the Optional Protocol to the CRC on the Involvement of Children in Armed conflict.

See Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) – 70 th Session - 19 February to 9 March

The Committee will consider the following state reports: Israel, Liechtenstein, Czech Republic, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, India, Canada, Antigua and Barbuda, Democratic republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Congo, Papua and Guinea and Togo.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) is the body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by its State parties.

All info at the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

This is a monthly electronic news bulletin of ‘Dignity International: All Human Rights for All’. Dignity International does not accredit, validate or substantiate any information posted by members to this news bulletin. The validity and accuracy of any information is the responsibility of the originator.

If you are working in the area of human rights with a special attention to different aspects of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, we would love to hear from you. To contribute, email us at info@dignityinternational.org

Afghanistan - Osttimor - Libanon - Uganda - USA - Argentinien - Bulgarien - Nordkorea - UN - NGOs - Stiftungen
ENTWICKLUNG - DOLLARS & TRÄUME lautet das Schwerpunktthema im neuen “überblick” ( www.der-ueberblick.de ).
Es handelt von den Schwierigkeiten zu helfen: Die Entwicklungszusammenarbeit aus amerikanischer Sicht, der Beitrag von Stiftungen, der Wiederaufbau nach Konflikten.
Weitere Themen wie Roma in Bulgarien, die Fleischindustrie in Argentinien, Pfingstkirchen und mehr finden Sie in der neuen Ausgabe von “der überblick” (Euro 6,00 + Versandkosten).
www.der-ueberblick.de (herausgegeben i.A. vom Evangelischen Entwicklungsdienst und von Brot für die Welt).

Das Heft wird in Kürze ausgeliefert.
Vergangene Schwerpunkte: Wohin geht Afrika, Zentralasien, Chinas Griff nach Afrika, Mediziner für den Norden, AIDS und Gesellschaft, Pfingstkirchen, Entwicklungspolitik, Fisch und Welternährung, Umgang mit Tod und Trauer, Bildung, Migration, Tansania, Sklaverei heute, Energie, NGOs, Exil, Vorsorge, Grenzen, Mexiko, Aids, Gefängnisse, Maghreb.
Noch keine Geschenkidee? Wie wäre es mit einem überblick-Geschenk-Abo (auf www.der-ueberblick.de oben rechts) ?
Mit freundlicher Empfehlung

die Redaktion

China Takes on the World

By Michael Elliott

Thursday, Jan. 11, 2007

Time Magazine, US Edition Jan 22, 2007, Vol. 169, No. 4, page 14

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1576831,00.html
“Blink for a moment and you can imagine that–as many Chinese would tell the tale–after nearly 200 years of foreign humiliation, invasion, civil war, revolution and unspeakable horrors, China is preparing for a date with destiny. “The Chinese wouldn’t put it this way themselves,” says Lieberthal. “But in their hearts I think they believe that the 21st century is China’s century.”"

Please read the entire article at http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1576831,00.html!

I am not a Race,
I am not a Color,
I am not a Country,
I am not a Nation,
I am a HumanBeing.
http://www.HumanBeingFlag.com
David Moore

Dear Friends of HumanDHS !
I have met with some of you and I do hope that you are all fine. I am now working for a NGO called GENEVA CALL (www.genevacall.org). On behalf of Geneva Call I am in charge of organizing a conference in Geneva on 4-5 June. The title of the conference is: “Exploring Criteria and Conditions for Engaging Armed Non-State Actors to Respect Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law”.
I am posting the Call for Papers you see further down because I think that it might interest you!
Most warmly,
Damas