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Netherlands, Iceland Join Genocide Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice
With the intervention of two more nations, 18 have now joined in support of the case, initially brought by South Africa.
Mar 12, 2026
The Netherlands and Iceland have joined the case before the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
On Wednesday, both nations filed declarations under Article 63 of the ICJ statute, which allows parties to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to intervene in cases involving the interpretation of that convention.
The case was filed in 2023 by South Africa, which cited numerous instances of Israeli leaders using genocidal rhetoric amid an onslaught of attacks against civilians.
Since October 2023, official estimates from the Gaza Ministry of Health have found that more than 72,000 people have been killed, though independent reviews have placed the death toll much higher.
Several independent humanitarian organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israel-based organization B'Tselem, have concurred with the intervening parties that Israel's conduct has constituted "genocide."
Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention defines "genocide" as acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Among these acts are killing, inflicting serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about their destruction, imposing measures to prevent births, or forcibly transferring their children to other groups.
In its filing before the ICJ, the Netherlands—home to The Hague, where the ICJ is located—argued that Israel's forcible displacement of more than 1 million civilians, killing of more than 20,000 children according to official estimates, and blocking humanitarian aid to use starvation as a weapon of war, are all acts that, when paired with statements from Israeli officials, imply genocidal intent.
The Dutch urged judges on the court to "take account of starvation or the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid for the purpose of establishing specific intent, in particular when this occurs on the basis of a concerted plan of a consistent pattern of conduct.”
Iceland in particular emphasized Israel's conduct toward the children of Gaza, saying that "attacks on children, including killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm, require special scrutiny as they are particularly indicative of intent to destroy the group."
The pair of European nations brought the total of countries participating in the proceedings up to 18—among them are Belgium, Brazil, Belize, Colombia, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, and Turkey.
The United States, under the Trump administration, meanwhile, has cut off foreign aid to South Africa for its role in launching the case against Israel, which receives billions of dollars in US military assistance annually.
Iceland's intervention in the genocide case marks the first time it has participated in a substantive case before the ICJ, according to the Icelandic news outlet RÚV.
"With Iceland's participation in South Africa's case before the International Court of Justice, we are using our voice in support of international law and human rights," said its minister for foreign affairs, Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir. "And we can be proud of that."
While its decisions are legally binding and could require Israel to cease violations of the Genocide Convention, the ICJ is not a criminal court.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have each been issued arrest warrants as part of separate war crimes proceedings by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which have thus far not been enforced.
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'The Clown Show Continues': Billy Long Out at IRS, But Probe to Persist
Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden said that "my investigators have obtained alarming information pertaining to Long's conduct at the IRS that we have begun to investigate."
Aug 08, 2025
Less than two months after U.S. Senate Republicans confirmed Billy Long as head of the Internal Revenue Service, the scandal-plagued commissioner confirmed on Friday that he is leaving the IRS to serve as President Donald Trump's ambassador to Iceland.
U.S. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—who opposed Long's IRS nomination with the rest of the chamber's Democrats—pledged in a Friday statement that a probe of the outgoing commissioner will continue.
"From the minute Trump announced Billy Long as his IRS pick it was obvious this would end badly, but every Senate Republican voted to confirm his nomination anyway," said Wyden. "He didn't even last two months on the job. Let's not forget that there wasn't a vacancy at the time Trump announced Long's nomination. Danny Werfel, a skilled leader with fans among Democrats and Republicans, had years left on his term."
The senator pointed out that "in just a handful of months, Trump and his crew have already gutted taxpayer service, weaponized IRS data against innocent taxpayers, and set us up for disaster when next year's filing season comes around. This is what Trump does—pick incompetent, unserious people for serious jobs, and sit back as the damage piles up."
"Billy Long left Congress a few years ago and went straight into the tax fraud industry, his only real experience in tax before his nomination," he added. "My investigators have obtained alarming information pertaining to Long's conduct at the IRS that we have begun to investigate, and that process will continue regardless of whether Trump stashes Long away in some foreign embassy."
The ouster was initially reported by The New York Times, which noted that "Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will serve as acting commissioner until a permanent replacement takes office," according to a senior Trump administration official.
Long then confirmed the development on his personal social media account, saying that "it is a honor to serve my friend President Trump and I am excited to take on my new role as the ambassador to Iceland. I am thrilled to answer his call to service and deeply committed to advancing his bold agenda. Exciting times ahead!"
He later added a joke about Immigration and Customs Enforcement: "I saw where former Superman actor Dean Cain says he's joining ICE so I got all fired up and thought I'd do the same. So I called Donald Trump last night and told him I wanted to join ICE and I guess he thought I said Iceland? Oh well."
A spokesperson for Bessent's department, which includes the IRS, said in a statement: "Treasury thanks Commissioner Long for his commitment to public service and the American people. His zeal and enthusiasm to bring a fresh perspective to the federal government was evident in both the House of Representatives and as part of the Trump administration. A new candidate for commissioner will be announced at the appropriate time."
Long previously represented Missouri in the U.S. House, where Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-Mass.) responded to the IRS commissioner's exit with a statement blasting Trump.
"We don't even need more details on Trump's latest scuttle to know how damaging his presidency has been for the IRS," Neal said. "With nearly a new commissioner each month and weakened customer service from his mass firings, the rampant instability comes at the expense of all who rely on it. One thing is for sure: Secretary Bessent should focus on his own job before collecting more responsibility."
Several critics, including Neal, highlighted that Long was preceded by several IRS leaders this year. As retired Adm. Mike Franken, a former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Iowa, put it on social media: "IRS Commissioner Billy Long is removed, the sixth change this year, by the guy who only hires 'the very best people.' The clown show continues."
Long's firing prompted widespread speculation that he was leaving the IRS because he refused to comply with an order from the president. Journalist Josh Marshall wondered, "How bad did the ask have to be for a Trumpy sleazebag like Billy Long to say no?"
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How's Iceland's 4-Day Work Week Working? 'Incredibly Well,' Study Says
"The Iceland story offers a very different vision to countries across Europe that are grappling with low productivity but trying the same old failed methods," said one researcher.
Oct 25, 2024
Iceland's economy grew more than all but one other rich European nation and its workers reported higher well-being, lower stress, and better work-life balance after the country reduced its standard work week from 40 to 36 hours, research published Friday affirmed.
The study—released by a pair of think tanks, London-based Autonomy Institute and Alda (Association for Sustainability and Democracy) of Reykjavík, Iceland—"offers new insight into the program of working-time reduction that has taken place in Iceland, following successful public sector trials in the country."
"After successful pilot schemes in the Icelandic national government and Reykjavík City Council between 2015 and 2019 which found improvements to employee well-being as well as productivity, historic labor agreements between Icelandic trade unions and employers 'embedded' the right to shorter hours for hundreds of thousands of workers," study authors Guðmundur Haraldsson, Jack Kellam, and Rowan Trickett noted.
The new report analyzed the results of studies conducted by the Social Science Research Institute at the University of Iceland, the Icelandic Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration "to understand job patterns,
work environment, and the reasons why individuals left paid employment" in 2021 and 2022.
Key findings include:
- 62% of people working reduced hours reported being more satisfied with their schedule;
- 97% of workers thought that shorter working hours had made it easier to balance work with their private life, or at least kept the balance the same as before (with more than half, 52%, thinking it had improved); and
- 42% of those who had moved to shorter hours thought that it had decreased stress in their private life, vs. 6% who felt it had increased.
"This study shows a real success story: Shorter working hours have become widespread in Iceland... and the economy is strong across a number of indicators," Haraldsson said in a statement.
Indeed, as CNN reported Friday:
In 2023, Iceland's economy expanded by 5%, a growth rate second only to that of Malta among rich European economies, according to the International Monetary Fund's latest World Economic Outlook, published earlier this week. That is much higher than the country's average growth rate of almost 2% in the decade between 2006 and 2015.
"Overall, the Icelandic economy has remained strong post the introduction of a widespread shorter working week," Autonomy Institute research director Will Stronge said in a statement. "The evidence we've collected suggests that when workers have a better work-life balance and are better rested—the economy benefits too."
"The Iceland story offers a very different vision to countries across Europe that are grappling with low productivity but trying the same old failed methods," he added.
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The Return of Whaling
The industry is on the cusp of winning a major victory over the global conservation movement that has fought for decades to bring this murderous practice to an end once and for all.
Jun 15, 2024
Whaling is seen as an evil of the past, memorialized in events like ritual recitations of Moby Dick. Or invented as a metaphor for the worst of humanity’s greed—the Tulkun hunts in Avatar: The Way of Water. But commercial whaling hasn’t actually stopped, it’s merely scaled back. Japan, Iceland, and Norway still engage in commercial whaling.
On May 9th, a spokesperson for the Japanese government announced that they were intending to set a hunting quota for fin whales. A week earlier, the Kangei Maru, a brand new, state of the art whaling factory ship, was launched. It’s almost four decades since the Japanese whaling industry felt the need for a new whaling mothership, and this one’s specifications will allow whalers to butcher fin whales on it. Plus, the Kangei Maru has the range and construction to work in Antarctic waters. Coincidentally, on exactly the same day as the Kangei Maru’s launch, a scientific paper was published, presenting the results of surveys conducted in one area of the Southern Ocean. The results suggest that there are around 50,000 fin whales in just that one site.
If the only way to regulate whaling internationally is under some gentlefolks’ non-binding agreements, how did commercial whaling almost disappear?
Then, on June 11th, the council of the Japanese Fisheries Agency announced a quota of 59 fin whales within the Japanese EEZ. On the same day, the Icelandic Minister of Fisheries issued a permit for a hunt of 128 fin whales by Hvalur, the Icelandic whaling company.
Fin whales are known—if they’re known at all—as being the second-largest of the great whales. Only blue whales are larger. Less well known is that they were also the whales hunted in the greatest numbers during industrial commercial whaling through the 20th Century. About 900,000 fin whales were killed across all ocean basins, nearly as many as the sum of all blue (~380,000), humpback (~250,000) and sei whales (~300,000) combined. Given their abundance and individual size, fins were where the real money was in high seas whaling.
This history is lost.
Most fin whales lived in the Southern Ocean, but they’re found throughout the polar and temperate regions of the world. Unlike humpback or right whales, they don’t engage in clearly defined annual migrations from feeding to breeding areas. They’re mostly offshore, beyond the reach of whale-watching operations. And they’re nowhere near as acrobatic as humpbacks. Fins don’t create their own PR value, the way that more visible and demonstrative whales do.
Currently, fin whales worldwide are categorized in the IUCN’s Red List as Vulnerable, one step down from Endangered, based on a review from 2018. However, a more recent (2023) IUCN review of fin whales in European waters listed them as being of Least Concern there. For the few places where data are available, most fin whale populations are increasing. Apart from the recent work showing about 50,000 whales in one small(ish) area of the Antarctic, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) lists about 40,000 fins in one part of the central North Atlantic (for 2015, so the estimate is almost a decade old). The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides estimates of around 7,000 off the east coast of North America, and 8,000 in the waters of California and Oregon. Added together, that’s over 100,000 fin whales—and it excludes most of the Southern Ocean, where fins are likely to be most abundant, and where other observations indicate that their numbers are on the rebound.
So, what about the Japanese whalers hunting fin whales? How can this happen? There are two international bodies primarily responsible for managing whaling internationally. The International Whaling Commission (IWC), oversees setting quotas for whaling, and the ways in which whaling is managed. At present, the IWC has quotas for commercial whaling set at zero, a moratorium that’s been in place since the mid-1980s. The other organization is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) which regulates—as the name suggests—international trade in endangered species. Fin whales are listed under CITES Appendix I, meaning that they are judged to be threatened with extinction, so international trade in their products is prohibited. This is (more or less) based on the Red Listing of fin whales internationally as Vulnerable. Were that status to change, their CITES listing may well change in response.
Japan left the IWC at the end of 2018 and so is no longer bound by IWC regulations. There’s nothing stopping Japan from doing this under IWC rules. What about CITES? Japan has a reservation to the listing of fin whales, as do Iceland and Norway. So these nations are not bound by CITES provisions regarding fin whales, and are free to trade in their products. That’s why Hvalur hf., the Icelandic whaling company, has exported fin whale meat to Japan from the almost 1000 fin whales they’ve killed over the past 15 years.
So, if the only way to regulate whaling internationally is under some gentlefolks’ non-binding agreements, how did commercial whaling almost disappear? Whalers wiped out almost all populations of large whales, which played an important role. There wasn’t much left to hunt. But previously, the threat of US sanctions was also a factor. Under the Pelly Amendment of the US Fishermen's Protective Act, the Secretary of Commerce and/or the Secretary of the Interior, are required to let the President know if “nationals of a foreign country, directly or indirectly, are engaging in trade or taking which diminishes the effectiveness of any international program for endangered or threatened species.” This is supposedly an obligation, and it’s also meant to lead to a ban on importation of fisheries and wildlife products from that country. Needless to say, despite Japanese nationals obviously diminishing the effectiveness of the functioning of both the IWC and CITES, Japan has not been certified. Geopolitics trumps marine conservation.
There was rejoicing back in early 2019 when Japan appeared to be giving up on pelagic whaling. But Japan leaving the IWC was never “good news for whales,” as stated at the time by Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Japanese whalers now get to ignore IWC-based rules on how many whales can be killed, where they can be killed, and who observes that the killing takes place in the manner that is claimed—something that has always been a problem with whaling.
There is nothing to stop Japanese whalers returning to much larger-scale commercial whaling. They are on the cusp of their comprehensive victory over the conservation movement.
Correction: An earlier version of this piece misstated the date of the Japanese Fisheries Agency's June announcement.
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A Nonviolent Revolution, Viking-Style
Could the United States actually be home to an organized movement to deliver its people a happier, healthier, and more egalitarian future?
Dec 18, 2023
In the first half of the 20th century the descendants of the Vikings did what we Americans have been hesitant to do. They waged a nonviolent revolution to take away the dominance of the economic elite.
In the U.S., even though the economic elite is okay with bringing climate emergencies to an increasing number of Americans, it maintains its control of both major parties. For the Nordics, overcoming elite control was a very big reach, but the Danes broke through in the 1920s and then the Swedes and Norwegians matched them in the 1930s. (Finns and Icelanders followed in the ‘50s.)
I personally experienced the payoff of a nonviolent revolution when as a young man I studied at a typically free Nordic university, in Oslo. Of my eleven books, the most pleasurable to write was Viking Economics, published in 2016 and still in use. When the book came out, an international association of Nordic economists invited me to keynote their conference, and I learned still more.
Few Americans seem to know that the 2023 World Happiness Report rates the people of Finland, Denmark, and Iceland as the top three countries in the world, with Sweden as sixth. The U.S. is fifteenth. The World Economic Forum’s measure of the gender gap among the nations puts Nordic countries in the top five, while the U.S. is 43rd. Racial Equity Rankings by US News and World Report puts the Nordics in the top ten. The United States? The U.S. comes in 73rd.
Yale University has created an Environmental Performance Index for rating national accomplishments. Four of the Nordics are in the top 10 while Norway follows at 20th. The U.S. is 43rd.
When an oligarchy is in charge, misery is widespread no matter how small and homogeneous you are!
In the 2022 Democracy Index rating, on a 10-point scale Nordics exceed 9.0. The U.S. is 7.85. In the 2019 rating of “best countries to raise a child,” the Nordics took the first four places, while the U.S. came in at 22nd.
Still, that was considerably better for the U.S. than the 2023 Global Peace Index: Nordic countries got the top two places while Sweden scored 28th. The U.S. scored 131st -- down ten places since the Democracy Index of three years ago!
I could continue with rankings but you get the idea. For Americans, the full potential of our energy, smarts, creativity, and yearning for justice remain hobbled by the power of the economic elite and its political culture maintained through mainstream mass media and the two major political parties.
The Vikings used to be in bad shape
If such ratings existed before the 1920s, the Nordics also would have been caught under-performing. In fact, they were in such trouble that their people were emigrating to the U.S. in large numbers.
Some people believe the Nordics do well these days because they are small and relatively homogeneous. But in the Nordic “bad old days” they were smaller, and much more homogeneous. They performed poorly because their economic elites were running things. When an oligarchy is in charge, misery is widespread no matter how small and homogeneous you are!
What changed among the Nordics to generate today’s high ratings? Their people who didn’t leave figured out how to use nonviolent direct action campaigns to force their oligarchies to give up control.
But why not make a violent revolution?
To many Finns in 1918, armed struggle seemed the obvious choice. Their violent insurgency turned into civil war. The capitalists and conservatives crushed the socialist uprising: the result in that small population was at least 35,000 dead.
The Finnish people’s defeat delayed their movement’s eventual victory over the economic elite, which they finally achieved through nonviolent struggle. (Another of the many cases in history where violence failed to reach an objective, then nonviolent struggle succeeded.)
The Finnish direct action climaxed in the 1950s: a nationwide 10-day metalworkers’ strike was followed by a general strike of half a million workers, and at last the Finns could put themselves in the same league with their Scandinavian comrades.
While many Danes in the early 1920s were also tempted by violence, sufficient activists noted the failure of the Finnish violence and also became disillusioned with how their “next door leftists” in Germany were handling their struggle for revolution.
Danish radicals chose first to build on the credibility of the co-op movement and on their common-sense vision of what Denmark could look like if Danes took away the dominance of the economic elite. They then plunged into nonviolent campaigning. By 1924 the Danes obtained their first social democratic prime minister.
Impressed, Swedish workers and others followed this Danish recipe: create a clear vision of a new society, escalate community organizing (via co-ops + unions, in their case), and launch campaign after campaign of nonviolent struggle, through which the movement grows more massive.
By 1931 the Swedish economic elite was desperate to hold onto power. They used their government’s military and killed workers in a local but important strike. The labor movement responded to the killings by calling a national general strike, supported by middle-class progressives, and took power.
Norwegian workers and farmers, eager to learn from both Danes and Swedes, then upped their level of struggle. The Norwegians had a more radical vision than did the Swedes—Lenin even invited Norwegian Labor Party leaders to join Russian revolutionary meetings in Moscow. The labor movement increased the level of strike activity, aiming to end the elite’s ownership of the means of production.
By then, however, Norway was caught by the 1930s’ Great Depression. Norwegians in poverty were starving while still trying to maintain their strikes. Given the pain and hardship, the Labor Party decided not to continue the struggle to make a full-scale victory and instead to settle for social democracy, which was less expansive than their version of a new society.
The coalition of workers and farmers agreed to let the capitalists continue to own and manage their means of production, but required them to accept complete unionization, a high degree of regulation, huge taxes on large incomes and capital, and accept a large sector of co-ops as well as many municipally-owned and nationally-owned enterprises.
Most importantly, the Norwegian economic elite would have to give up their power to run the economy as a whole: big-picture decisions would be made by the working class and family farmers, through their dominance in parliament.
A growing number of mass strikes forced the Norwegian economic elite to surrender. The Labor Party—the most socialist of the Nordic workers parties—then basically ran the country for half a century.
Icelanders show Americans what we could do here
An observer might guess—since today’s Vikings have it so good—that their capacity for nonviolent struggle would have vanished through disuse. Wrong.
After decades of basic Icelander contentment with their social democracy, in 2008 Icelanders found most of the bankers—in league with the government—had become so corrupt that the country’s economy collapsed. Even the ATM’s no longer worked!
Icelanders quickly built a nonviolent direct action campaign powerful enough to oust the bankers and major party politicians alike. The media called it “the pots and pans revolution” because people massing outside parliament banged their kitchen pots so loud that the parliamentarians couldn’t debate!
The movement refused to allow Iceland to cooperate with the capitalist International Monetary Fund, whose job is to aid countries in bankruptcy. Instead, the movement itself rebuilt political and economic structures on a sound basis. (The women’s banks were uncorrupted and didn’t need to start over.)
When I later interviewed the rebellion’s leader at the key site of the struggle, I learned that 3% of Iceland’s population actively engaged in the direct action. I began to fantasize what ten million Americans (3 percent of the U.S. population) might do given a crisis—a climate disaster, for example—PLUS strategic nonviolent leadership.
The Icelanders’ story raises this question: Will Americans and other activists prepare our vision and strategy now, for large-scale nonviolent struggle when a climate emergency or other crisis arrives that makes it possible?Keep ReadingShow Less
Tens of Thousands of Women Strike in Iceland Over Pay Gap, Gender-Based Violence
"An 'equality paradise' should not have a 21% wage gap and 40% of women experiencing gender-based or sexual violence in their lifetime," said one organizer.
Oct 24, 2023
Schools, health systems, and television broadcasters in Iceland were among the businesses that said they would have to close or reduce services on Tuesday due to the country's first full-day women's strike in nearly 50 years—potentially helping to prove the point that tens of thousands of women and non-binary workers are hoping to make by demonstrating that their labor is vital and must be paid accordingly.
Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir is among the women taking part in the "kvennafrí," or "women's day off," and told reporters she expects women in her cabinet to strike as well, as organizers push to close Iceland's gender pay gap and end gender-based violence.
While Iceland has been recognized for 14 straight years as having the smallest gap in gender equality among the countries in the World Economic Forum's annual rankings, strike organizer Freyja Steingrímsdóttir told The Guardian it is hardly an "equality paradise," and women are demanding greater action from the government to ensure true parity.
On average, Icelandic women still earn about 10% less than men, and as much as 21% less in some professions. Forty percent of women report experiencing gender-based violence.
"An 'equality paradise' should not have a 21% wage gap and 40% of women experiencing gender-based or sexual violence in their lifetime," said Steingrímsdóttir, communications director for the Icelandic Federation for Public Workers. "That's not what women around the world are striving for."
Taking place 48 years after the last full-day women's strike, in which 25,000 people rallied in Reykjavík and 90% of women staged a work stoppage affecting paid and unpaid labor, this year's protest has adopted the slogan, "Kallarðu þetta jafnrétti?" or "You call this equality?"
Icelandic President Gudni Th. Johannesson expressed his support for the strike, saying women's "activism for equality has changed Icelandic society for the better and continues to do so today."
The country's trade unions—which count 90% of Icelandic workers as members—are key organizers of the action and are calling on women and nonbinary workers to join the strike.
The 1975 action was tied to passage of an equal rights law the following year and the election of the country's first female president—the first woman to be democratically elected president in any country—in 1980. Other successes have followed in recent years, such as the passage of a law that requires some companies to prove they're paying people of different genders equally for equal work.
Former Climate Minister Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir told The Guardian that men continue to fail to take responsibility for domestic labor, leaving unpaid work such as childcare to women who are also attempting to succeed in the workplace.
"If you look at it economically women seem to be punished for taking these extra burdens, which is not righteous," Halldórsdóttir told the outlet. "It's something that we need to look into and need to change."
Organizers are calling for the wages of workers in female-dominated professions to be made public and for the federal government to take greater action against gender-based violence, ensuring perpetrators are held accountable. One 2018 University of Iceland study found that only 12% of survivors of sexual assault press charges, and those who do have their cases dismissed nearly 75% of the time. Women told researchers they feared the "shame, guilt, and condemnation" that would come with having their cases tried in the justice system.
"We are now trying to connect the dots, saying that violence against women and undervalued work of women in the labor market are two sides of the same coin and have an effect on each other," Drífa Snædal, spokesperson for Stígamót, an anti-sexual violence group, told The Guardian.
Kate Jarman, a director of corporate affairs at a National Health Service hospital in the United Kingdom, said a similar women's strike in the U.K. would force numerous workplaces with majority-female staff to "recognize our worth."
The Left in the European Parliament also expressed support for the action.
" Solidarity with the strikers," the progressive political party said.
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Iceland Named Most Peaceful Country—Again—as US Ranking Steadily Declines
The United States has fallen 10 spots in the last three years in the Global Peace Index, driven by a high degree of militarization and a rising homicide rate.
Jul 05, 2023
Iceland was named the most peaceful country in the world for the 15th consecutive year in the annual ranking compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace on Wednesday, while the organization warned that militarization in the United States is steadily making the wealthiest country in the world less peaceful.
In its 2023 Global Peace Index, the group ranked 163 countries where 99.7% of the world's population lives, determining how countries compare based on the level of "societal safety and security," "ongoing domestic and international conflict," and the degree of "militarization."
Iceland had low rankings for each of the three categories and maintained its place at the top of the list, which it's held every year the IEP has released the index. An increase in the country's homicide rate and the arrest of four people last year over a plot to attack several Icelandic politicians resulted in a 4% decline in its overall score, but "Iceland remains the most peaceful country in the region and the world," according to the index.
The United States, on the other hand, has declined every year during the current decade, falling two places in the past year and 10 places since 2020.
The change from 2022's index was "was driven by a deterioration on the safety and security domain," reads the report, "particularly in the perceptions of criminality and homicide rate indicators."
The U.S. homicide rate is "now above six per 100,000 people and more than six times higher than most Western European countries," according to the IEP.
The nation's epidemic of gun violence—and policymakers' refusal to impose strict regulations on gun ownership—has become well-known throughout the world, with Amnesty International issuing a travel warning due to the crisis in 2019. Gun violence replaced vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death in children in the U.S. in 2022.
The U.S. ranked close to the middle of the 163 countries in terms of societal safety and security. Its lowest ranking was in the category of militarization, a pattern that has been evident in the IEP's previous Global Peace Indexes.
The country was behind only Russia and Israel in terms of its degree of militarization this year. In 2022 it also ranked just behind North Korea, but this year militarization trends in the United States were found to be intensifying more rapidly.
The index's militarization domain takes into consideration indicators including weapons imports, nuclear and heavy weapons, and military expenditures. The United States' absolute spending on its military increased by $70 billion over the past year, the IEP noted.
The U.S. ranked below numerous countries which have been subject to travel warnings from the U.S. State Department, with officials warning of terrorism and high crime rates.
Iceland does not maintain armed forces or have a military budget and—like other high-ranking countries on the peace index such as Denmark and New Zealand—it invests heavily in social services, education, and healthcare to benefit all residents.
The index notes that high-ranking countries tend to prioritize guaranteed human rights and freedoms for all residents, the free flow of information, and "equitable distribution of resources."
While ranking at the top of the list of countries that have maintained a peaceful environment, high-performing countries in the index have also been recognized in recent years for other successes.
Denmark was found to have the world's second-best public healthcare system by U.S. News and World Report in 2022, and Iceland was named the third-healthiest country in the world by the Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index in 2019.
Both countries were also ranked in the top three happiest countries last year by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
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'Major Milestone in Compassionate Whale Conservation' as Iceland Suspends Hunt
"There is no humane way to kill a whale at sea, and so we urge the minister to make this a permanent ban," said Humane Society International's Europe director.
Jun 21, 2023
Citing animal welfare concerns, Iceland's government is suspending this summer's whale hunt through the end of August, a move cheered by marine conservationists—who are pressing for a permanent whaling ban.
Icelandic Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Fisheries Svandís Svavarsdóttir—a member of the Left-Green Movement, which leads a three-party ruling coalition—explained Tuesday that "I have made the decision to temporarily stop whaling in light of the unequivocal opinion of the council of animal welfare specialists," according to a translation by Iceland Review.
"The conditions of the Act on Animal Welfare are inescapable in my mind: If the government and license-holders cannot guarantee welfare requirements, this activity does not have a future," she added, raising whaling opponents' hopes for a permanent ban.
Svavarsdóttir's decision follows the publication this week of a report by the country's Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST) that called last season's whale hunt illegal because it did not meet the standards required by the Icelandic Animal Welfare Act.
"This is a major milestone in compassionate whale conservation. Humane Society International is thrilled at this news and praises Minister Svavarsdóttir for ending the senseless whale killing which will spare hundreds of minke and imperiled fin whales from agonizing and protracted deaths," the advocacy group's Europe executive director Rudd Tombrock said in a statement.
"There is no humane way to kill a whale at sea, and so we urge the minister to make this a permanent ban," Tombrock added. "Whales already face so many serious threats in the oceans from pollution, climate change, entanglement in fish nets, and ship strikes, that ending cruel commercial whaling is the only ethical conclusion."
Speaking after last year's Icelandic whaling season, Sharon Livermore, the director for marine conservation at the Massachusetts-based International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) noted that "studies have shown that it can take up to 25 minutes for a whale to die after being shot with an explosive harpoon."
"This summer, one fin whale was landed with four harpoons in its body. This tragic example indicates that many whales suffer a slow and agonizing death because of whaling," she added. "It is unbearable to imagine how these animals must suffer."
Danny Groves of the U.K.-based group Whale and Dolphin Conservation wrote on Tuesday:
Aside from the issues with the killing methods, the MAST report's expert panel also concluded that it is not possible to determine the sex of a whale from the ship or whether they are about to kill a pregnant female or a lactating mother with a calf. The chances of surviving for motherless whale calves are negligible. Hunting is also not possible without following the whales for some time before shooting, which causes stress and fear, and killing them is not possible in a quick and painless manner.
Referring to Iceland, Robert Read, who heads the U.K. branch of the direct action group Sea Shepherd, said that "if whaling can't be done humanely here... it can't be done humanely anywhere."
"Whales are architects for the ocean," Read added. "They help boost biodiversity, they help fight climate change by affecting the carbon cycling process."
Last summer, Hvalur—the only whaling company still operating in Iceland—slaughtered 148 fin whales in the frigid Atlantic waters around the island nation. This, despite the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifying fin whales as "vulnerable."
The Icelandic government allows the annual slaughter of up to 209 fin whales and 217 minke whales. While the International Whaling Commission (IWC) agreed to a global moratorium on all commercial whaling in 1986, Iceland—which is an IWC member—formally objects to the policy.
IUCN credits bans on whaling—only Iceland, Japan, and Norway allow commercial hunts—for improving the fin whale's status from "endangered" to "vulnerable" in 2018.
Hvalur previously announced that this would be its last whaling season in business, citing a decline in profits, according to Euronews Green.
"Justification is required if whaling is to be allowed," Svavarsdóttir wrote in February 2022. "It must be demonstrated that it is economically justified to renew hunting permits."
"Justification is required if whaling is to be allowed."
The minister asserted that it is "indisputable" that whaling has "not had much economic significance for the national economy in recent years."
"There is little evidence that there is any economic benefit to doing this fishing, as the companies that have a license to do so have been able to catch whales in recent years but have not done it," she continued. "There may be several reasons for this, but perhaps the simplest explanation is that sustained losses from these fisheries are the most likely."
When Japan temporarily stopped hunting whales amid international activist pressure, the country imported whale meat from Iceland. However, Svavarsdóttir noted that "the Japanese now hunt their own whale meat."
"Why, she asked, "should Iceland take the risk of maintaining fisheries that have not produced economic benefits in order to sell a product for which there is little demand?"
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'Overwhelming Success': Researchers Praise Iceland's Four-Day Work Week Trials
"The public sector is ripe for being a pioneer of shorter working weeks, and lessons can be learned for other governments," said one analyst.
Jul 06, 2021
A new study demonstrates that working fewer hours for the same pay--long a central aim of the left--has "transformative positive effects" for both employees and employers alike, with researchers calling trials of a four-day work week in Iceland an "overwhelming success."
"The Icelandic shorter working week journey tells us that not only is it possible to work less in modern times, but that progressive change is possible too."
--Gudmundur Haraldsson, ALDA
The Association for Democracy and Sustainability (ALDA), an Icelandic nonprofit organization, and Autonomy, a progressive think tank based in the United Kingdom, published a report (pdf) last month detailing the results of two major trials conducted by the Reykjavik City Council from 2014 to 2019 and the Icelandic national government from 2017 to 2021.
Prompted by campaigns organized by trade unions and civil society groups, the trials involved more than 2,500 workers--roughly 1.3% of Iceland's total working population--who switched from working five days and 40 hours per week to 35- or 36-hour work weeks over the course of four or five days with no reductions in pay. The trials included employees with nine-to-five shifts as well as those with non-standard schedules and took place in dozens of various workplaces, from offices to preschools, social service providers, and hospitals.
"This study shows that the world's largest-ever trial of a shorter working week in the public sector was by all measures an overwhelming success," said Will Stronge, director of research at Autonomy. "It shows that the public sector is ripe for being a pioneer of shorter working weeks, and lessons can be learned for other governments."
The trials, which were unique in scale and diversity and yielded an abundance of quantitative and qualitative data, provide "groundbreaking evidence for the efficacy of working time reduction," the report states.
Researchers found that "worker wellbeing increased across a range of indicators, from perceived stress and burnout, to health and work-life balance."
Workers--who reported having more time to enjoy with family and friends, rest or pursue hobbies, and finish housework--were not the only beneficiaries of reduced working time.
According to researchers, "productivity and service provision remained the same or improved across the majority of trial workplaces," demonstrating the potential advantages of a shorter work week without pay cuts for businesses and consumers.
Following the successful trials, "Icelandic trade unions and their confederations achieved permanent reductions in working hours for tens of thousands of their members across the country," the report notes. In contract negotiations that took place between 2019 and 2021, labor representatives won shorter hours for union members or gained the right for workers to negotiate shorter hours, empowering about 86% of the country's entire workforce as a result.
Researchers wrote that "the trials also remained revenue-neutral for both the city council and the government, providing a crucial--and so far largely overlooked--blueprint of how future trials might be organized in other countries around the world."
At least two additional trials are currently being conducted in different parts of the world. BBC reported Tuesday that Spain is piloting a four-day work week for companies in response to economic challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic, while Unilever is allowing employees in New Zealand to cut their hours by 20% without lowering their pay.
The new report on the benefits of Iceland's four-day work week comes in the wake of a study on the deadly epidemic of overwork published in May by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO).
"Even as millions are unable to find enough work to survive," Jacobin's Alex Press wrote of the WHO and ILO's analysis of health outcomes of people who work 55 or more hours per week, "long working hours kill more than 700,000 people per year."
In addition to the positive public health impacts of reducing the amount of time people spend at work, another report (pdf) released in May by Platform London's 4 Day Week campaign found that shifting to a shorter work week also comes with environmental benefits, including lower greenhouse gas emissions.
"The Icelandic shorter working week journey tells us that not only is it possible to work less in modern times, but that progressive change is possible too," said ALDA researcher Gudmundur Haraldsson.
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In the Fight Against Poor Health, the USA Is Punching Well Below Its Weight
By focusing more on battling inequality, new research shows, the United States could significantly improve American life expectancy.
Dec 27, 2020
Americans today have a life expectancy of 78.5 years. People in other high-income nations lead longer lives. Japan and Hong Kong, for instance, enjoy a life expectancy of 84 years. The United States has also fared poorly with Covid-19, with some of the highest caseloads in the world. All this raises an obvious question: Why can't the United States achieve better health outcomes?
Worldwide, the wealth of a country clearly seems to determine a large part of the variation in life expectancy. High-income nations rank at the top of our global life expectancy tables, and low-income countries lag at the bottom. Wealthier countries, the broad argument goes, achieve their higher life expectancies through more resourced and effective health systems and higher standards of living. They have the wherewithal to invest in societal factors that influence health, everything from housing and education to sanitation and social security.
"The United States provides the lowest level of unemployment, sickness, and public pension benefits in the high-income world."
The U.S. economist Samuel Preston described all these relationships back in 1975. But he also noted that some countries sat above the trendline. They achieved higher life expectancy than what we would expect from their income. Other countries fell below the trendline. They achieved lower life expectancies than what their income would predict.
At any level of economic development, in short, some countries translate their wealth into health more successfully than others. The "Punching Above Their Weight Network," an international collaboration of leading public health researchers and policy actors co-founded by Australia's Fran Baum and South Africa's David Sanders, has been working since 2017 to investigate why some countries are doing so well relative to their income. The goal: to better turn wealth into good population health outcomes.
Toward this end, we recently conducted case studies of three countries: Ethiopia, Brazil, and the United States. Ethiopia punches above its weight, achieving three extra years of life expectancy than we would expect given the nation's modest income. Brazil also punches above weight, by two years of life expectancy. The United States, by contrast, punches almost three years below weight.
Our analysis highlighted four factors we feel are driving population health performance. With the new Biden-Harris administration about to take office in United States, our findings have clear implications for how the United States could add years to the life expectancy of the American people.
Our first finding: Adequate welfare and social security systems rate as fundamentally important. Ethiopia and Brazil have both instituted strong social security policies. Brazil's renowned "Bolsa Familia" program, introduced by then-president Lula da Silva in 2003, transfers cash to poor families that send their children to school and have them properly vaccinated.
The United States, meanwhile, provides the lowest level of unemployment, sickness, and public pension benefits in the high-income world. In 2016, analysts Jason Beckfield and Clare Bambra's 2016 study found that the United States could extend its life expectancy by almost four years by lifting its social security outlays merely to the average for other high-income countries. Taking this step alone would have the United States punching above its weight relative to wealth.
"The United States spends more on health care, overall, than any other nation in the world. Despite this spending, large inequities in access to health care still exist across the United States."
Our second finding focused on the contribution of inequities within a country. The British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have demonstrated how more unequal societies have worse health and social outcomes. Inequities, they argue, affect health through various pathways, among them the lack of social cohesion and trust in unequal societies and the corrosive dissatisfaction with their own social status that people feel in deeply stratified societies. Ethiopia and Brazil have both sought to act on socioeconomic and racial inequities, the United States not nearly as much. The excess Covid death rates among Black Americans testify to the sharp and continuing inequity built into the American social order.
Our third finding looks at the role of a nation's health system. In the United States, health care remains partly a state responsibility, and that leads to a systematic diversity in health care spending and performance across the nation. The United States spends more on health care, overall, than any other nation in the world. Despite this spending, large inequities in access to health care still exist across the United States. The Biden and Harris commitment to expand the Affordable Care Act has the potential to begin to redress these existing health inequities.
The fourth and final finding: Civil society plays a crucial role in promoting health and equity. We found strong civil society organization and participation in Ethiopia and Brazil, factors that contributed to the better health outcomes in these countries. In the United States, civil society plays a less evident role. The United States has the lowest voting participation rates of high-income countries and extremely low levels of trade union membership.
Covid-19 has laid bare the health inequities between and within countries and highlights the urgency of addressing inequities to improve the health of populations. Several countries such as New Zealand and Iceland have instituted "well-being budgets" that prioritize those functions of government that promote health. Biden and Harris have an opportunity to pursue a similar path.
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