December, 03 2010, 07:33am EDT
Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief Groups Urge Rebuilding Plan for Gaza
WASHINGTON
With the blockade and resulting crisis in Gaza continuing with no end in sight, a group of international human rights and humanitarian relief organizations is urging a major home-repair initiative that will enable victims to reclaim their right to live in dignity.
In a report entitled "Gaza Repair Strategies," the nongovernmental organizations propose a concerted effort of small-scale home repairs that offers viable, safe, and dignified repair options. The strategy is designed to enable Gaza residents to move toward regaining their lives and livelihoods until a permanent political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be reached.
The report was published by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, American Friends Service Committee, and Architecture for Humanity.
"Much of Gaza remains in ruins," Gretchen Alther, UUSC's senior associate and a leader in the campaign to protect the human rights of the victims of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. "A severe, Israeli-imposed blockade continues to keep out most of the materials needed to repair and rebuild homes, schools, hospitals, and universities. UUSC, along with many other organizations around the world, has called this situation a crisis of human dignity."
The political crisis in Gaza has dire humanitarian consequences. The Gaza economy is stagnant, unemployment is near 50 percent, and poverty is widespread. About 80 percent of the people in Gaza depend on humanitarian aid for their survival. Much of the infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and factories in Gaza are unable to function.
Given the severity of the Gaza crisis and the sluggish rate of housing rehabilitation, the report details the most common and critical damage to private residences, and suggests viable, safe and dignified repair options, projects that use locally available resources that can be implemented by communities themselves.
"Many of these suggestions are immediately feasible, while others are ambitious and possibly uncommon, and will require new materials and funding-and the political will to make both available" the report says.
To download and read the full report, visit Gaza Repair Strategies at https://www.uusc.org/gazarepairstrategies
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UUSC is an international human rights organization founded in 1940 that advances human rights and social justice around the world, responding to humanitarian crises, both natural and man-made, especially reaching out to neglected and marginalized populations in dire need of relief aid. For more information, visit www.uusc.org.
AFSC is a Quaker organization committed to social justice, peace, and humanitarian service whose presence in the Gaza Strip began in 1949. For more information, visit www.afsc.org.
Architecture for Humanity is a nonprofit organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crises and brings design services to communities in need through a global network of design, development and construction professionals. For more information, visit https://architectureforhumanity.org/.
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Thousands of Indians petitioned the country's Election Commission seeking punitive action against Modi.
"The prime minister, while campaigning... made a speech on April 21 in Rajasthan that has disturbed the sentiments of millions of Constitution-respecting citizens of India," one petition states. "The speech is dangerous and a direct attack on the Muslims of India."
Muslim groups around the world also slammed Modi's speech, which the U.S.-based Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) called "hateful and dangerous."
"It is unconscionable, but not surprising, that far-right Hindutva leader Narendra Modi would target Indian Muslims with a hateful and dangerous diatribe despite his role as the leader of a nation with such a diverse religious heritage," said CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad.
"We again call on the Biden administration to declare India a 'country of particular croncern' over its discriminatory and violent policies targeting Muslims and other religious minorities," Awad added. "Global Islamophobia is alive and well in India and must be confronted before it escalates to something even worse."
South Asia historian Audrey Truschke, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, accused Modi of "straight-up fascism."
"Modi had a history of encouraging mass violence against Muslims," Truschke added. "So we should all take his words seriously."
Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat in February 2002 when a train full of Hindu pilgrims was set ablaze, killing 58 people. The cause of the disaster remains disputed, but Modi was quick to blame Muslims for the fire. In a three-day paroxysm of intercommunal bloodletting, Hindu mobs murdered at least hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of Muslim men, women, and children. Many women and girls were raped. More than 250 Hindus were also killed during what came to be called the Gujarat riots, during which an estimated 150,000 people were also forcibly displaced.
A team sent by the British government concluded that Modi was "directly responsible for a climate of impunity" that enabled the pogrom. However, a special investigation commissioned by the Indian Supreme Court cleared him of complicity in 2012. Modi's alleged role in the massacre led to a U.S. visa ban during the George W. Bush administration that was lifted during the tenure of former President Barack Obama after Modi became prime minister.
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Earlier this year, Progressive International's (PI) executive body used Modi's consecration of a highly controversial Hindu temple on the former site of a 16th-century Muslim mosque destroyed by a Hindu nationalist mob as an opportunity to issue a warning about the accelerating erosion of democracy in India.
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