September, 29 2008, 01:40pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Tricia O'Rourke, Humanitarian Media Officer, Oxfam International
Mob: +44 (0) 7989 965359
Preventing Atrocities The Real Test of New World Order
NEW YORK
The major shift in global
power provides an opportunity to protect all civilians from genocide
and other atrocities, said international agency Oxfam in a new report
published today.
For a Safer Tomorrow - Protecting Civilians in a Multipolar World warns
that the world will be less safe for all unless emerging and existing
global powers work together better to prevent atrocities and ensure the
safety of people caught up in armed conflict.
A new US President,
the re-emergence of Russia, the rise of China and India, and a stronger
European Union and African Union creates a different world order which
must do a better job protecting people whose lives are threatened by
conflict. During the recent crisis in Georgia, there was much debate
about the impact on world politics but less about the civilians caught
in the fighting and forced to flee their homes.
"Ensuring the
safety of civilians has got to be the overriding priority in any
conflict, including the 'war on terror'. For far too long, governments
have agreed that civilians must be protected but when it comes to the
crunch - and peoples' lives are at risk - too often narrow,
self-interest takes priority. As we have seen from Afghanistan to Iraq,
civilian casualties can ferment existing anger and feelings of
injustice, and contribute to a continuous cycle of violence and
revenge," said the report author Ed Cairns of Oxfam.
"In today's
interdependent world no country is immune to the insecurity and threats
from a conflict on the other side of the globe. It is in all our
interests to ensure that civilians are protected."
In 2006, 63
per cent of the world's refugees were from Iraq and Afghanistan while
Oxfam's own research shows that between 1990 and 2005, armed conflict
cost Africa an average of $18bn a year.
The report states that
the 'war on terror' has overshadowed crises like the Democratic
Republic of Congo which, with a death toll more than twice that of
Iraq, has lost 5.4 million or eight per cent of its people to conflict,
and the deadly hunger and disease that it has unleashed since 1998.
This year more than a thousand women a month have reported being raped,
many as part of a systematic campaign linked to the conflict.
For a Safer Tomorrow
is based on Oxfam's experience responding to the world's conflicts for
more than 60 years. It reviews the protection of civilians in current
and recent conflicts, and examines the implications of the shift in
global power. It sets out an agenda to protect civilians through local,
national and regional action with far more consistent international
support.
"In the past, the world has failed to protect people
from murder and assault in places like Darfur and the Democratic
Republic of Congo. The emerging world order must do a much better job
if we are to ensure the changing world is not just a different world
but a safer one too," said Cairns.
It will take political will
and fortitude to prevent future genocides and atrocities. However
examples from the last year show that when the world is willing to act
to prevent bloodshed or to bring to justice those responsible for
crimes against humanity, it can get results.
In January 2008
Kenya did not collapse into bloody civil war, partly because of local
community action to prevent widespread outbreaks of violence as well as
efforts by African and international leaders to restore peace. In July,
former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, was captured after 13
years on the run and is headed for justice at the UN war crimes
tribunal in The Hague.
In order to protect civilians caught up in
armed conflict and improve global peace and stability, Oxfam is calling
on the international community to:
- make the safety of civilians the overriding priority in the response to conflicts
- adopt zero tolerance of war crimes - whether in counter-terrorism or elsewhere
- act much more quickly to tackle the trends that threaten new or prolonged conflicts - including poverty and inequality, climate change and arms proliferation
- urge all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to renounce the use of their veto when it comes to war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Read the report: For a Safer Tomorrow: Protecting Civilians in a Multipolar World
Oxfam International is a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice. We are working across regions in about 70 countries, with thousands of partners, and allies, supporting communities to build better lives for themselves, grow resilience and protect lives and livelihoods also in times of crisis.
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Saudi Aramco, an oil giant almost entirely owned by the government of Saudi Arabia, announced Sunday that it brought in a staggering $161.1 billion in profits last year as it joined other fossil fuel companies in capitalizing on energy market turmoil sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The company's profit figure for 2022 is the largest ever recorded by an oil corporation. Amin Nasser, Aramco's CEO, declared on an earnings call that "this is probably the highest net income ever recorded in the corporate world."
For comparison, ExxonMobil—the second-largest oil company in the world behind Aramco—reported $56 billion in net income last year, a record for the U.S. firm but nowhere close to the Saudi corporation's haul.
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Aramco said its banner profits—driven by "stronger crude oil prices, higher volumes sold, and improved margins for refined products"—were up nearly 47% compared to 2021, a windfall the company has used to reward investors.
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In 2018, ignoring the vocal warnings of experts and advocacy groups, the then-Republican-controlled Congress passed legislation that weakened post-financial crisis regulations for banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets, sparking fears of systemically risky failures and more taxpayer bailouts.
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As Warren noted as the bill was flying through Congress, a number of Democrats—including Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.)—were integral to the legislation's passage, which led almost immediately to more bank consolidation.
Prior to the enactment of the Crapo bill, which then-President Donald Trump signed into law on May 24, 2018, banks with more than $50 billion in assets were subject to enhanced liquidity mandates and more frequent stress tests aimed at ensuring they could weather economic turmoil.
The 2018 law raised the threshold for the more stringent regulations to $250 billion or higher, a gift to banks like SVB that had been working for years to gut post-crisis regulations implemented under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. The diminished oversight, some argued, is at least partly to blame for SVB's crisis.
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As The Leverreported Friday, SVB specifically pushed Congress in 2015 to hike the regulatory threshold to $250 billion, with the bank's president touting its "strong risk management practices."
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The collapse of SVB, a major lender to tech startups, was the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history and the biggest since the 2008 crisis. SVB's failure came days after it announced it sold $21 billion worth of bonds at a substantial loss, triggering fears about the firm's health and a run on the bank that was intensified by venture capitalists' calls for startups to pull their money.
The bank's last-ditch efforts to raise capital and find a buyer failed, prompting regulators to seize its assets and begin efforts to make depositors whole. (SVB reportedly paid out bonuses to U.S. employees just hours before federal regulators took over.)
The American Prospect's David Dayen noted that "because the depositors holding the bag at SVB are Very Important People, there's going to be intense pressure for a bailout."
"Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman is already calling for one," Dayen observed. "Larry Summers told Bloomberg that the financial system should be fine, as long as depositors get every penny of their money back, which would be a $150 billion bailout."
In an appearance on "Face the Nation" Sunday morning, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pledged that "we are not going to do that again," referring to the bank bailouts of 2008.
"But we are concerned about depositors," Yellen said, "and we're focused on trying to meet their needs."
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The Washington Postreported Sunday that "federal authorities are seriously considering safeguarding all uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, weighing an extraordinary intervention to prevent what they fear would be a panic in the U.S. financial system."
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This story has been updated to include comments from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
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One American intelligence expert urged the U.S. to maintain friendly relations with "barbarous, but long-standing allies" in the Middle East lest China fill the vacuum.
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While advocates of peace and a multipolar world order welcomed Friday's China-brokered agreement reestablishing diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, U.S. press, pundits, and politicians expressed what one observer called "imperial anxieties" over the deal and growing Chinese influence in a region dominated by the United States for decades.
The deal struck between the two countries—which are fighting a proxy war in Yemen—to normalize relations after seven years of severance was hailed by Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, as "a victory of dialogue and peace."
The three nations said in a joint statement that the agreement is an "affirmation of the respect for the sovereignty of states and non-interference in internal affairs."
"The U.S. encourages war while China pushes the opposite."
Iran and Saudi Arabia "also expressed their appreciation and gratitude to the leadership and government of the People's Republic of China for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its success," the statement said.
United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric thanked China for its role in the deal, asserting in a statement that "good neighborly relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are essential for the stability of the Gulf region."
Amy Hawthorne, deputy director for research at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, toldThe New York Times that "China's prestigious accomplishment vaults it into a new league diplomatically and outshines anything the U.S. has been able to achieve in the region since [President Joe] Biden came to office."
Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., called the deal a sign of "a battle of narratives for the future of the international order."
CNN's Tamara Qiblawi called the agreement "the start of a new era, with China front and center."
Meanwhile, Ahmed Aboudouh, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, another D.C. think tank, wrote that "China just left the U.S. with a bloody nose in the Gulf."
At the Carnegie Endowment, yet another think tank located in the nation's capital, senior fellow Aaron David Miller tweeted that the deal "boosts Beijing and legitimizes Tehran. It's a middle finger to Biden and a practical calculation of Saudi interests"
Some observers compared U.S. and Chinese policies and actions in the Middle East.
"The U.S. is supporting one side and suppressing the other, while China is trying to make both parties move closer," Wu Xinbo, dean of international studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Times. "It is a different diplomatic paradigm."
Murtaza Hussein, a reporter for The Intercept,tweeted that the fact that the agreement "was mediated by China as a trusted outside party shows shortcomings of belligerent U.S. approach to the region."
While cautiously welcoming the agreement, Biden administration officials expressed skepticism that Iran would live up to its end of the bargain.
"This is not a regime that typically does honor its word, so we hope that they do," White House National Security Council Strategic Coordinator John Kirby told reporters on Friday—apparently without any sense of irony over the fact that the United States unilaterally abrogated the Iran nuclear deal during the Trump administration.
Kirby added that the Biden administration would "like to see this war in Yemen end," but he did not acknowledge U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in a civil war that's directly or indirectly killed nearly 400,000 people since 2014, according to United Nations humanitarian officials.
U.S relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained during the tenure of President Joe Biden. While Biden—who once vowed to make the repressive kingdom a "pariah" over the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—has been willing to tolerate Saudi human rights abuses and war crimes, the president has expressed anger and frustration over the monarchy's decision to reduce oil production amid soaring U.S. gasoline prices and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Nevertheless, the Biden administration is currently trying to broker a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel following the Trump administration's mediation of the Abraham Accords, a series of diplomatic normalization agreements between Israel and erstwhile enemies the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The United States, which played a key role in overthrowing Iran's progressive government in a 1953 coup, has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since shortly after the current Islamist regime overthrew the U.S.-backed monarchy that ruled with a brutal hand for 25 years following the coup.
Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Middle East Programs for the Atlantic Council, urged the U.S. to maintain friendly relations with brutal dictatorships in the region in order to prevent Chinese hegemony there.
Panikoff wrote in an Atlantic Council analysis:
We may now be seeing the emergence of China's political role in the region and it should be a warning to U.S. policymakers: Leave the Middle East and abandon ties with sometimes frustrating, even barbarous, but long-standing allies, and you'll simply be leaving a vacuum for China to fill. And make no mistake, a China-dominated Middle East would fundamentally undermine U.S. commercial, energy, and national security.
Other observers also worried about China's rising power in the Middle East and beyond.
New York Times China correspondent David Pierson wrote Saturday that China's role in the Iran-Saudi Arabia rapprochement shows Chinese President Xi Jinping's "ambition of offering an alternative to a U.S.-led world order."
According to Pierson:
The vision Mr. Xi has laid out is one that wrests power from Washington in favor of multilateralism and so-called noninterference, a word that China uses to argue that nations should not meddle in each other's internal affairs, by criticizing human rights abuses, for example.
The Saudi-Iran agreement reflects this vision. China's engagement in the region has for years been rooted in delivering mutual economic benefits and shunning Western ideals of liberalism that have complicated Washington’s ability to expand its presence in the Gulf.
Pierson noted Xi's Global Security Initiative, which seeks to promote "peaceful coexistence" in a multipolar world that eschews "unilateralism, bloc confrontation, and hegemonism" like U.S. invasions and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
"Some analysts say the initiative is essentially a bid to advance Chinese interests by displacing Washington as the world's policeman," wrote Pierson. "The plan calls for respect of countries' 'indivisible security,' a Soviet term used to argue against U.S.-led alliances on China's periphery."
The U.S. has attacked, invaded, or occupied more than 20 countries since 1950. During that same period, China has invaded two countries—India and Vietnam.
"The Chinese, who for years played only a secondary role in the region, have suddenly transformed themselves into the new power player."
New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker also published an article Saturday about how the "China-brokered deal upends Mideast diplomacy and challenges [the] U.S."
"The Americans, who have been the central actors in the Middle East for the past three-quarters of a century, almost always the ones in the room where it happened, now find themselves on the sidelines during a moment of significant change," fretted Baker. "The Chinese, who for years played only a secondary role in the region, have suddenly transformed themselves into the new power player."
Some experts asserted that more peace in the Middle East would be a good thing, no matter who brokers it.
"While many in Washington will view China's emerging role as mediator in the Middle East as a threat, the reality is that a more stable Middle East where the Iranians and Saudis aren't at each other's throats also benefits the United States," tweeted Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
"Unfortunately, the U.S. has adopted an approach to the region that has disabled it from becoming a credible mediator," he lamented. "Too often, Washington takes sides in conflicts and becomes a co-belligerent—as in Yemen—which then reduces its ability to play the role of peacemaker."
"Washington should avoid a scenario where regional players view America as an entrenched warmaker and China as a flexible peacemaker," Parsi cautioned.
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