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war
New Report Warns of the Rise of Killer Robots
Public Citizen says autonomous weapons "inherently dehumanize the people targeted and make it easier to tolerate widespread killing."
Feb 29, 2024
A Public Citizen report released on Thursday outlines the risks of the Pentagon adopting the use of autonomous weapons on the battlefield and how this could occur in the not-too-distant future.
The report focuses on the Pentagon's efforts to utilize artificial intelligence in various ways and the American military contractors that are developing weaponry that utilizes AI, including autonomous weapons.
"The single greatest concern involving AI and the Pentagon is the integration of AI into weapons systems such that they can function autonomously, delivering lethal force without intervention or meaningful human control," the report state. "The most serious worry involving autonomous weapons is that they inherently dehumanize the people targeted and make it easier to tolerate widespread killing, including in violation of international human rights law."
"Autonomous weapons are already in development around the world and racing forward."
Though the Pentagon has instituted some policies to ensure AI will be used ethically by the military, the report states, these policies don't go as far as to ban the use of autonomous weapons—often referred to as "killer robots."
Furthermore, the report notes that military contractors like General Dynamics, Vigor Industrial, Anduril Industries, and others are currently developing unmanned tanks, submarines, and drones.
"As a discrete weapons technology, autonomous weapons deployment is nearly certain to create an AI weapons arms race. That is the logic of international military strategy. In the United States, a geopolitical rivalry-driven autonomous weapons arms race will be spurred further by the military-industrial complex and corporate contractors," the report states. "Autonomous weapons are already in development around the world and racing forward."
Israel has purchased and at times deployed self-piloting, lethal drones. Russia has utilized autonomous drones in Ukraine. The age of the killer robot is here, and Public Citizen warns that the U.S. needs to help prevent the deployment of killer robots from being normalized.
"The United States should pledge not to develop or deploy autonomous weapons, and should support a global treaty banning such weapons," the report states.
Public Citizen also recommends the U.S. adopt policies that prevent using AI to launch nuclear weapons or using deepfakes on the battlefield, which could be used for "influence operations."
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As Palestinian Children in Gaza Face Genocide, We Must Not Remain Silent
Now is not the time to stay quiet. We urgently need a ceasefire and an end to the Israeli bombing campaign.
Nov 07, 2023
Over 2,000 academics and students who specialize in the study of children and childhood, including ourselves, have come together to call for an immediate ceasefire to halt the unfolding Western-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and demand an immediate end to the egregious violation of Palestinian children’s rights.
Signed by students and academics from around the world, this statement draws on decades of research to highlight the immediate and long-term impact of settler-colonialism, occupation, and violence on children’s lives and the importance of speaking out.
The statement proclaims: "For many of us, entering this field of study was motivated by a desire to improve the material, social, and political conditions of life for children globally. We cannot, therefore, sit by as the situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate."
Our research on Palestinian childhood shows the incredible capabilities of Palestinian children to negotiate meaning and find beauty in the most traumatic of conditions. It looks at Palestinian children as active agents and meaning-makers who, despite the circumstances of the birth lottery, manage to find and cultivate beauty in their lives.
It focuses on how the adults around these children—parents, grandparents, carers, teachers, politicians—fearful for what the future holds for this next generation, protect and control this space of perceived innocence.
Our research, focusing on child migration, shows how border regimes operate through practices of containment, forced immobility, and the denial of futures—all strategies operating in occupied Palestine.
But children and young people, whether stuck in place or forced to move, do their utmost to nourish and reclaim futures, not least through caring for people, places, and social justice, much as we see right now in Gaza.
Moral duty
As researchers who have built our academic careers not only studying childhood, and doing what we do to help improve the conditions of marginalized children's lives, including those in Palestine, we view it as our moral duty to speak out and demand our governments put an immediate end to the Israeli campaign against Gaza.
The unprecedented scale and violence of these attacks compound the longstanding suffering of Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba. Yet, there is a lack of will, even a refusal, on the part of many powerful Western governments to call for a ceasefire. Now is not the time for our silence.
The First Intifada, which broke out in December 1987, generated a mass of interest and research on Palestinian children, both from international academics and international non-governmental organizations. The research and resulting social welfare programs either frame children as victims of the conflict or active participants. But neither adequately addresses the contexts or complexities of Palestinian children's lives.
No one is born a victim; people are made vulnerable and victimized by acts of violence and repression, just like those Palestinian children and adults forced into life imprisonment in Gaza, Israel's open-air prison.
In the public imagination, there remains an unquestioned affinity between the concept of "victim" and "child," as both are paradigmatic concepts of passivity and innocence. Viewed as the "ideal victims," children are often constructed as vulnerable, defenseless, innocent, and hence worthy of sympathy and compassion, while adults—especially men—are not.
We have seen this adult-child binary (as well as the gender binary) play out in humanitarian responses in Muslim countries, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, whereby women and children are constructed as perfect victims, worthy of international aid and in need of saving, while adult men are portrayed as violent and responsible for their own suffering.
Our research in the West Bank found that children (especially those under 10) are often depoliticized and viewed as agentless victims. Therefore, projects involving children are popular with Western funders—both individuals and donor organizations—as they allow them to shed colonial guilt without addressing the structural violence of the Israeli occupation.
No one is born a victim; people are made vulnerable and victimized by acts of violence and repression, just like those Palestinian children and adults forced into life imprisonment in Gaza, Israel's open-air prison.
At the same time, children and young people have been the driving force of the two Intifadas. Palestinian children make complex decisions about how to survive, act, and resist while enduring unimaginable violence and subjugation and have inspired supporters of liberation, justice, and freedom around the world.
Cold, reckless calculation
In the current war on Gaza, one Palestinian child is killed every 15 minutes, in what Gaza-based surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah has called a war on children and Israeli historian and expert in Holocaust studies Raz Segal deemed a “textbook case” of genocide.
Despite the high stakes, no one with the power to avert this genocide is looking out for Gaza's children. It is as if these young people are not seen as children or are excluded from the category of childhood altogether. This can be understood as an effort of Israel and its Western backers to sidestep humanitarian law and public sympathies for "innocent children."
It is evident that Israel’s current actions are not about self-defense.
Given the scale of the suffering of children in Gaza, the refusal of the UK government and the supposedly left-leaning leader of the opposition to support calls for a ceasefire has been horrifying but not surprising.
It was, after all, the British government’s Balfour Declaration, a cold and reckless calculation of British imperial interests, that laid the foundation of the Israeli state by proclaiming support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with little consideration of its indigenous Palestinian population.
While the British government has never really pressured Israel toward a ceasefire in past escalations, it has at least pretended to care about civilian loss and "innocent children" and made noises about peace. The Labour Party has never been this timid. The colonial mindset remains deeply entrenched, as do the cold calculations that allow and justify the violence.
Decontextualizing and dehistoricising the current atrocities and framing them as the Israel-Hamas war or the Israel-Gaza war, frames all Gazans, including the 47 percent under 18, as Hamas and hence complicit in their own suffering. This plays straight into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's expansionary project of annexing the occupied Palestinian territories
For it is evident that Israel’s current actions are not about self-defense. Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza with Israeli work permits were rounded up, imprisoned, and sent back to the besieged strip, and medical visas were canceled for those getting treatments in Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem.
Since the current escalation, at least 150 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank. As Hamas wields no power in the West Bank, these deaths—like those of the nearly 4,000 Gazan children killed—do not fit neatly into the narrative of Israel defending itself and hence remain unaccounted for.
Intimidation tactics
Using the 7 October date as the reference point for the start of escalation omits the history of 75 years of Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine and the 17-year blockade that has suffocated the Gaza Strip. This decontextualization stops the world from viewing the Palestinian cause as a just one, therefore stripping it of the right to receive international support, such as the demand for a ceasefire.
Writing this piece as a Muslim and an anti-Zionist Jew, we await the backlash and the hate mail. The hypocrisy over free speech and academic freedom has hit a new low, as student groups in the UK are banned for their pro-Palestinian stance and U.S. universities lose funding for not condemning the Hamas attacks fast enough.
Unsurprisingly, it is Palestinian academics facing the brunt of this repression. As a result of signing the statement calling for a ceasefire, our distinguished Palestinian colleague Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, was asked to step down from her position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The news was circulated in the Israeli mainstream media, leading to further threats against Shalhoub-Kevorkian and her family.
Such intimidation tactics are also being used against academics of color. In the UK, two scholars of South Asian descent were singled out for their lawful expressions of solidarity with Palestinians on social media, and harassed by the Daily Mail, the UK’s largest tabloid.
Retaliations against non-Zionist Jews who speak out are also on the rise; they are denounced as traitors in Israel, and face real threats to their livelihoods and security from the state and its right-wing backers.
The threat to academics’ job security, however, pales in comparison to the recent horrors unleashed on the besieged Gaza Strip.
We therefore affirm the calls of the statement of international childhood scholars and students. We urgently need a ceasefire and an end to the Israeli bombing campaign.
Palestinian children’s lives are precious. All Palestinian lives are precious.
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Do American Taxpayers Really Want to Fund Israel's Genocide of the Palestinian People?
Congress should hold public hearings to get an answer to this question.
Nov 03, 2023
Dear Congressional Leaders Sen. Schumer, Rep. Johnson, Sen. McConnell and Rep. Jeffries:
We strongly urge Congress to hold public hearings, with testimony from a broad range of witnesses, before voting on President Biden’s request for an additional $14.3 billion in military funding to further subsidize Israel’s overwhelming military superiority over Hamas in the war that erupted on October 7, 2023.
We believe these questions, among others, should be examined:
1. Why should American taxpayers pay for Israeli military spending incurred because of its stupendous intelligence failure and ongoing genocidal war?
2. Does Israel need the additional aid since the United States already provides Israel $3-4 billion annually and statutorily guarantees it “a qualitative military advantage” over its neighbors?
3. Can the United States afford the $14.3 billion in additional spending with a national debt soaring past $33 trillion, and annual trillion-dollar budget deficits?
4. Israel is among the top 20 global economies in terms of GDP per capita. Could the $14.3 billion be better spent on assisting the world’s 71 million impoverished internally displaced refugees, many created by undeclared, lawless, U.S. wars?
5. Would the military subsidies make the United States even more of a co-belligerent with Israel in a war against Hamas and, under international law, legally responsible for war crimes or genocide?
6. Should the additional $14.3 billion in deficit or unpaid-for funding be conditioned on Israel’s compliance with the laws of war and the Genocide Convention as certified under oath by the President, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense with an accompanying written explanation? All of these officials have urged the Israeli government to “comply with the laws of war.”
7. How did the Biden Administration come up with the outsized figure of $14.3 billion for a prosperous economic, technological, and military superpower having a greater social safety net for its people than the United States?
Asking the American people for their advice on sending $14.3 billion to Israel for its acknowledged, defense blunders is not difficult. Conservative Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie polled 49,000 people from his impoverished state. They registered overwhelming opposition to sending these billions of dollars for Israel’s daily slaughter of the civilians in Gaza, nearly half of whom are children.
Disaster is courted when the United States races to begin or join military conflicts without measured, sober second thoughts born of hearings and debates that entertain diverse views. The House held no hearings on the ill-fated Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 which expanded the Vietnam War. The Resolution passed unanimously with but 40 minutes of debate. Senate action was only modestly less rash in voting 98-2 to open the gates to a trillion-dollar military disaster.
Congress never inquired whether the Executive Branch’s dubious Domino Theory was fantasy. Indeed, Vietnam today is an ally of the United States.
Congress held no hearings before approving the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) with but one dissenting vote, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). After spending more than $2 trillion fighting the Taliban over 20 years, the United States de facto conceded defeat in 2021 with an even more militant version of the Taliban now in power in Afghanistan.
Such hearings will not place Israel in jeopardy. Hamas is no existential threat. And all the world can see Israel pulverizing Gaza daily, including its civilian population, half of whom are children, with brutal air and land attacks on critical civilian infrastructure.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader, Esq.
Bruce Fein, Esq.
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Where the 'Just War' Theory Has Delivered Us
War is both just and unjust simultaneously, and it will never end.
Nov 03, 2023
We—by which I mean most of humanity—are still playing with the so-called “just war theory,” the intellectual justification for war dating back to St. Augustine and the early centuries of the Common Era.
You know, violence is morally neutral—and thus, when the cause is just and sacred, go for it! Kill the non-believers. Make the world a better place.
Just war theory makes the world numb to human slaughter. Dead children, and all other innocent victims, become abstractions, collateral damage. It’s almost as though the role of lone-nut mass murderers—killers who clearly have no moral justification to walk into a shopping mall or school classroom or bowling alley and start shooting—is to remind the world that lives are precious and murders equal hell. Thus the recent mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine (apparently the 565th mass shooting in the U.S. this year) generated painful eulogies of the victims in the media, cutting open the national soul. Yes, their deaths are unspeakable tragedies!
But the thousands of dead in Gaza and every other war don’t get such public eulogies—because, of course, there are far too many of them to write about, but also . . . well, because the war may be just (and the U.S. is either waging it or supplying the weapons) and humanizing the collateral damage could make the good guys look bad.
Is the winner of a violent conflict, ipso facto, the one who’s right? Humanity is stuck with an enormous paradox.
So war is neutral. Killing children (and/or their parents) is neutral and sometimes necessary, for self-defense and other God-sanctioned reasons that make the world a better place. I can see St. Augustine’s point. The defense of what we value is necessary, and defense means fighting back.
But as I wrote a year ago: A serious, unaddressed problem comes along with this. “What if we value . . . oh, let’s say, whiteness? And along comes a nonwhite teenager who (allegedly) looks inappropriately at a white lady. Shouldn’t we lynch him? What’s to stop us? Violence is morally neutral.”
In other words, the neutrality of violence can be used by anyone in a position of power. Is the winner of a violent conflict, ipso facto, the one who’s right? Humanity is stuck with an enormous paradox. If war is morally neutral, anyone, including those whose values are morally questionable (or simply wrong), can resort to it. Thus we must never stop preparing for it. War is both just and unjust simultaneously, and it will never end.
And here’s the thing. War is not just. Indeed, it’s humanity’s cancer. It can’t happen without first obliterating our primary value: the sanctity of life. As Kelly Denton-Borhaug points out, citing the research of John Dower: “Dehumanization always precedes and paves the way for the horrors of war. Human beings won’t kill other humans if they truly believe their lives are as worthy as their own.”
Or as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared last month, as Israel’s “just war” got underway: “We are fighting human animals.”
And that makes any and every action possible. Denton-Borhaug goes on to note that “dehumanization does more than just enable war. It also generates an annihilating energy all its own through which the atrocity-laden destruction of war multiplies exponentially.”
Believing in the just-war theory means believing in—valuing—dehumanization.
In other words, during the course of war, the violence keeps intensifying. Why shouldn’t it? War’s entire point is winning, and when the enemy refuses to give up, the violence must increase. But her point transcends mere strategic necessity. The limitless expansion of violence takes on a life of its own. As she points out, during World War II, when the Japanese turned to kamikaze fighting, “the Americans abandoned precision bombing and initiated the full-scale firebombing of Japanese cities. The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 burned to death more than 100,000 civilians in a single night. More than 60 cities were similarly targeted, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese in a final paroxysm of violence.”
And then, of course, came Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And this is where the human race now finds itself. Just war theory, after several millennia of justified dehumanization, has led us to the brink of Armageddon. And we’re geopolitically fine with that! Powerful nations not only possess nukes, they — at least some of them, such as the U.S.—continue to modernize them, as though . . . my God, I can’t even complete this sentence. We’re living on a planet with two possibilities: no future without nuclear weapons, or no future at all.
Believing in the just-war theory means believing in—valuing—dehumanization. Not of all of us, as the defenders say. Only some of us. But to dehumanize part of the human race, part of who we are — so much so that we are prepared to turn them into ashes and dust — has consequences far beyond the simplistic mindset of winning or losing. This is poison. War will always come home, whether as loners with AK-47s or as nuclear winter.
Indeed, war doesn’t simply “come home,” a metaphor that implies a separated humanity—separated by invisible lines called national borders. Yes, conflict is part of who we are; we are a complex entity. But war drives a spike into our collective soul. We are one. When we prepare for and ultimately wage war, rather than reach for understanding, we are killing ourselves: our precious children, our fragile planet.
And we know this — every time we look into a child’s eyes. This is where our future pulsates.
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War and Climate Crisis Threaten Global Progress on Human Health, Warns UN Chief
"We can return to the path of progress. We can realize our ambitions for health and well-being for all," said António Guterres. "But only if the world works together... despite the tensions straining relations between nations."
May 21, 2023
"Progress is in peril."
That was United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' warning Sunday to the 76th World Health Assembly.
Over seven decades ago, he noted, "countries came together and affirmed some fundamental truths: that peace depends on health; that disease in one nation endangers all; and that achieving the greatest possible health for everyone, everywhere relies on cooperation."
Since the creation of the World Health Organization (WHO), Guterres continued, "human health has advanced dramatically: global life expectancy—up over 50%; infant mortality—down 60% in 30 years; smallpox—eradicated; and polio on the verge of extinction."
But now, "war and conflict threaten millions. The health of billions is endangered by the climate crisis. And the Covid-19 pandemic has stalled, and even reversed, progress in public health," the U.N. leader said in a video address kicking off the assembly.
"We can return to the path of progress. We can realize our ambitions for health and well-being for all. But only if the world works together. If we cooperate, despite the tensions straining relations between nations," he stressed.
Guterres called for "strengthening the independence, authority, and financing of the World Health Organization," and said that "it is vital to prepare for the health threats to come—from new pandemics to climate dangers—so that we prevent where we can, and respond fast and effectively where we cannot."
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus—who earlier this month declared Covid-19 over as a global health emergency—similarly urged international coordination during his welcome speech to the assembly. The agency leader said that "in 2020, I described Covid-19 as a long, dark tunnel. We have now come out the end of that tunnel."
"To be clear, Covid-19 is still with us, it still kills, it's still changing, and it still demands our attention," Tedros continued. The end of the emergency "is not just the end of a bad dream from which we have woken. We cannot simply carry on as we did before."
"This is a moment to look behind us and remember the darkness of the tunnel, and then to look forward, and to move forward in the light of the many painful lessons it has taught us. Chief among those lessons is that we can only face shared threats with a shared response," Tedros added. He stressed that the pandemic accord now being negotiated "must be a historic agreement to make a paradigm shift in global health security, recognizing that our fates are interwoven."
As the assembly—scheduled through May 30—got underway in Geneva, Switzerland, Guterres was in Hiroshima, Japan, for the Group of Seven (G7) summit, where he also underscored the importance of global cooperation while speaking to the press on Sunday.
"My message to G7 leaders is clear: While the economic picture is uncertain everywhere, rich countries cannot ignore the fact that more than half the world—the vast majority of countries—are suffering through a deep financial crisis," Guterres said. "The crushing economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, unsustainable levels of debt, rising interest rates, and inflation are devastating developing and emerging economies."
"There is a systemic and unjust bias in global economic and financial frameworks in favor of rich countries," he declared, highlighting that "access to Covid-19 vaccines was deeply unfair" and "the recovery has been extremely unbalanced."
While the U.N. chief argued that "it's time to reform both the Security Council and the Bretton Woods institutions," referring to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, he also said that "even within the present unfair global rules, more can and must be done to support developing economies."
G7 countries are "central to climate action," Guterres said, noting the need for "faster timelines to phase out fossil fuels and ramp up renewables," an end to dirty energy subsidies, and financial support for developing nations that are disproportionately bearing the brunt of a crisis largely created by the Global North.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Sunday, since G7 leaders on Saturday put out a communiqué addressing a wide range of topics, campaigners around the world have decried the statement's support for further investments in planet-heating gas, calling it "a blunt denial of the climate emergency."
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Ukrainian Women Prove Resilient in the Face of War
The Russian aggression has provoked a redistribution of family roles, adding to the already heavy burden of women who, in addition to traditional home responsibilities are now obliged to look for additional sources of income.
Jan 02, 2023
The war in Ukraine is having growing negative effects on women and girls' health and well-being. They encompass not only gender-based violence but include all aspects of women's and girls' lives. Access to basic services and life-saving sexual and reproductive healthcare has been drastically disrupted.
Since the 2013 Maidan revolution, also known as the "dignity revolution," Ukrainian women have been increasingly engaged in the political, social, and economic affairs of the country. This engagement has led to an increase in women's political participation, manifested by gains in parliamentary seats and in village and regional councils. As a result, Ukraine has ratified or joined most international agreements on gender equality.
The years of conflict... increased and deepened pre-existing gender inequalities and created new ones such as arbitrary killings, rape, and trafficking.
In spite of these advances, however, gender inequalities persist, bolstered by traditional norms that promote systemic discrimination and biases against women and girls. These inequities have been aggravated by the war conducted by Russia in eastern Ukraine since 2014. The years of conflict since then have increased and deepened pre-existing gender inequalities and created new ones such as arbitrary killings, rape, and trafficking.
The war has particularly affected marginalized and disadvantaged groups such as female-headed households, internally displaced persons, Roma people, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people. As a result, women facing multiple forms of discrimination are in need of special assistance.
Today, millions of people have fled Ukraine and millions more—nearly two-thirds of them women and children—have been internally displaced and, as a consequence, do not have access to essential services such as healthcare, employment, and housing. Poverty and dependency on social assistance have increased and have pushed many women into the unprotected informal sectors of the economy.
The Covid-19 pandemic, which began in Ukraine on March 3, 2020, threatened the gains that had been made on women's rights, economic empowerment, and access to healthcare. Prolonged restrictions on mobility, particularly for women and young people, have increased despair and isolation, and have increased its negative effect on people with mental health challenges. Young people and children are forced to sacrifice their future so they can survive in the present.
Even in times of peace, women tend to be more food insecure than men, but the war in Ukraine has exacerbated the number of women experiencing hunger, energy insecurity, and economic instability. The Russian aggression on Ukraine has provoked a redistribution of family roles, adding to the already heavy burden of women who, in addition to traditional home responsibilities are now obliged to look for additional sources of income.
Women who are caring for children face extreme shortages of essential medicines, healthcare, and funds to obtain basic items, including baby food and formula. Many women face the challenge to accommodate and feed internally displaced people. This increases their unpaid care and domestic work responsibilities, often at the expense of their physical and mental health and well-being.
The martial order issued by the Ukraine State Border Guard Service at the beginning of the Russian invasion that led to tens of thousands of civilians fleeing to other countries decreed that those between 18 and 40 years old should stay in the country. It is estimated that 95% of single-parent households are headed by single mothers, who now face increased pressure to provide for their families while male family members are more directly involved in defense activities.
Despite the heavy burdens imposed by the war, Ukrainian women have shown considerable resilience and have contributed greatly to defense efforts. It is estimated that women make up 25% of the Ukrainian armed forces. This is an almost 10% increase from the beginning of the Russian invasion. Women have integrated fully into the armed forces, performing duties as soldiers and holding positions of command.
The Russian military leaders didn't expect such a strong resistance from the Ukrainian soldiers, and even less from a Ukrainian army strengthened by the participation of women, something that needs to be acknowledged and honored as a critical factor in the defense of their country.
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The Year 2022 Displayed the Woeful Shortcomings of Humankind
War, famine, disease, and climate disasters made this year one feel like standing on the edge of apocalypse.
Dec 31, 2022
A year that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is ending with famine in Africa, while still spreading death and misery through an enduring pandemic and a deteriorating climate crisis — 2022 has been an apocalyptic warning of the frailty of our planet and the woeful shortcomings of humankind.Beyond the stark statistics of millions of people displaced by war and natural disasters, it has been a 12 months that tragically highlighted our global interconnections and how a confluence of events and trends can bring another year of record levels of hunger.
Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians (numbers given by the UN and involved parties vary enormously) have been killed in Ukraine since Russia launched war on February 24. More than 7.8 million Ukrainians have fled the country. Billions of dollars have been spent on armaments.
But the impact of the war has been felt worldwide, driving up prices of basic commodities such as oil, gas, grain, sunflower oil and fertilisers. Somalia, now in the grip of the worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa in 40 years, used to import 90 per cent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine.
Commodities have been weaponised. Countries slipped back into recession, just as they were slowly recovering from the economic distress of Covid-19 lockdowns. A deepening relationship between sanctioned Russia and an energy- hungry China exacerbated existing tensions with the US over Taiwan. The result? China broke off climate cooperation efforts with the US in the run-up to the COP27 climate conference hosted by Egypt in November with 200 countries and 35,000 people attending.
Against the backdrop of devastating floods in Pakistan and West Africa, and with 2022 on its way to becoming one of the five hottest years on record, agriculture and food security joined the COP27 agenda. Talks ran into extra time, as they tend to, and countries of the global South emerged with the landmark creation of a special fund paid by wealthier countries to address the Loss and Damage caused by climate change in the most vulnerable nations.
“After 30 contentious years, delayed tactics by wealthy countries, a renewed spirit of solidarity, empathy and cooperation prevailed, resulting in the historic establishment of a dedicated fund,” said Yamide Dagnet, director for climate justice at the Open Society Foundations, reflecting a sense of hard fought victory among developing countries.
Still unresolved however is which countries will give money and to whom. China in particular seems uneasy over which category it belongs to. However COP27 joined its 26 forerunners since 1995 in not reaching a binding agreement on cutting fossil fuel burning which has continued to rise globally, except for a brief pandemic dip. For this, many branded it a failure. “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish. It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact – or a Collective Suicide Pact,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the opening plenary session. By the end, many felt the conference had concluded with the latter. Rather than falling, the latest estimates from the Global Carbon Project show that total worldwide CO2 emissions in 2022 have reached near-record levels.
Victims of devastating floods, heatwaves and forest fires, and severe drought in Central Sahel and East Africa surely needed no confirmation from the final decision text of COP27 which recognises “the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger” and the vulnerability of food production to climate change.
In this respect, COP27 recognised the importance of nature-based solutions – a theme driven by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in ringing alarm bells on the degraded soil, water sources and eco-systems caused by intensive agriculture with overuse of fertilisers and pesticides. According to FAO, more than 25 percent of arable soils worldwide are degraded, and the equivalent of a football pitch of soil is eroded every five seconds. The planet’s bio-diversity is being devastated as a result. As highlighted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in stressing the vital connections between Nature and people, a landmark report in July found that 50,000 wild species provide food, cosmetics, shelter, clothing, medicine and inspiration. Many face extinction. As international agencies and NGOs (and media outlets) jostled and competed for funding to deal with the fallout from wars and climate emergencies, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) which is active in the Sahel cautioned that only 1.7 per cent of all climate finance reaches small-scale producers in developing countries and as little as 8% of overseas aid goes to projects focused primarily on gender equality. Women’s empowerment has been made a major focus of ASAP+, IFAD’s new climate change financing mechanism.
Women and girls are paying “an unacceptably high price” among communities hit by severe drought in the Horn of Africa, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). It launched a $113.7 million appeal to scale-up life-saving reproductive health and protection services, including establishment of mobile and static clinics in displacement sites.
Also overshadowed by wars and pandemics in 2022 were marginalised communities lacking a voice, suffering diseases such as leprosy or exploited in the form of child labour.
Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, says many issues have been sidelined because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Society has the knowledge and means to stop and cure leprosy, he says in the ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign by the Sasakawa Leprosy Initiative.
“When people are still being discriminated against even after being cured, society has a disease. If we can cure society of this disease—discrimination—it would be truly epoch-making,” he told IPS.
A similar message was delivered by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi who told the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour that a mere $53 billion per annum – equivalent to 10 days of military spending – would ensure all children in all countries benefit from social protection. International Labour Organisation and UNICEF statistics from 2020 show at least 160 million children are involved in child labour, a surge of 8.4 million in four years. Children denied education became a burning issue in Afghanistan in March when the Taliban declared that girls would be banned from secondary education. The UN said 1.1 million girls were affected. The late-night reversal of a decision by Taliban authorities to allow girls from grades 7 to 12 to return to school was met with outrage and distress, inside and outside Afghanistan. Denial of human rights to girls and women has fuelled the desire of many to get out of Afghanistan and seek a better life elsewhere, adding to the millions around the world forced to flee their homes because of conflict, repression or disaster. The Ukraine conflict has displaced more than 14 million people, about a third of the population.
A UN Office on Drugs and Crime report on trafficking warns that refugees from Ukraine are at risk of including sexual exploitation, forced labour, illegal adoption and surrogacy, forced begging and forced criminality.
As they come over border crossings into Poland, refugees – including victims of rape – are greeted with posters and flyers carrying warnings about jail terms for breaking local abortion laws, images of miscarried foetuses, and a quote from Mother Theresa saying: “Abortion is the greatest threat to peace”.
UNDP, which is assisting the Ukraine government in getting access to public services for IDPs, says in its 2022 report, Turning the tide on internal displacement, that earlier and increased support to development is an essential condition for emerging from crisis in a sustainable way.
“More efforts are needed to end the marginalization of internally displaced people, who must be able to exercise their full rights as citizens including through access to vital services such as health care, education, social protection and job opportunities” said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator.
Nearly one million Rohingya refugees languishing in refugee camps in Bangladesh after being driven out of Myanmar in waves since 2016 would surely agree.
Asif Saleh, executive director of BRAC, said to be the world’s largest NGO and founded by Sir Fazle after the independence of Bangladesh in 1972, says work needs to “shift towards a development-like approach from a very short-term humanitarian crisis-focused approach”. But the only solution for the Rohingya refugees is their sustainable and voluntary repatriation to Myanmar. As 2022 closes, that unfortunately looks highly unlikely as the military junta that seized power in 2021 fights ethnic armed organisations on multiple fronts.
There was one seismic milestone event that happened in late 2022 although no one is quite sure exactly where and when. The few people to witness it were not aware either – not that it prevented the UN from declaring it a special day. The birth of the 8 billionth person was celebrated on November 15. The world’s population has doubled from 4 billion in 1974 and UN projections suggest we will be supporting about 9.7 billion people in 2050. Global population is forecast to peak at about 10.4 billion in the 2080s.
Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN environment programme, sent a message to the baby, and the rest of the world, as countries meet in Montreal for the COP15 biodiversity conference this month.
“We’ve just welcomed the 8 billionth member of the human race on this planet. That’s a wonderful birth of a baby, of course. But we need to understand that the more people there are, the more we put the Earth under heavy pressure,” she said.
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Children Pay the Highest Price in Global Refugee Crisis
Jun 20, 2016
The world is witnessing a rapid increase in the number of people forced to flee from wars, conflict, and persecution in countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It is estimated that approximately half of the 19.5 million registered refugees at a global level are children and youth. They are the most vulnerable victims of these conflicts.
The case of Syria is paradigmatic. Three years of conflict have turned Syria into one of the most dangerous places to be a child, according to UNICEF. Out of a population of 21.9 million, more than 9 million are under 18. It is estimated that 5.5 million children are affected by the conflict, a number that is almost double the year before. More than 4.29 million children inside Syria are poor, displaced, or caught in the line of fire.
International aid organizations have been doing a remarkable job helping the population of countries affected by wars. However, only in Syria, one million children are living in areas that aid workers cannot regularly reach, thus depriving them of vital support. More than a third of Syrian families are no longer living in their own homes or communities, seriously affecting their health and quality of life.
As a result of the fall in immunization rates -from 99 percent before the war to less than 50 percent now -polio has reemerged in Syria after a 14-year absence. At the same time, doctors report an increase in the number and severity of measles, pneumonia, and diarrhea cases. In response to the polio outbreak, UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), and health ministries in the region have launched the largest immunization campaign in the region's history, targeting more than 25 million children.
The country's healthcare system's capacity to assist the population has been seriously affected. Many doctors and health personnel have either been killed or have left the country. 60 percent of the public hospitals have been damaged or are out of service.
Many times, militants bomb health care facilities, wait for first responders and emergency crews to come in and then strike again, thus maximizing the impact of their attacks. On April 27, 2016, the Al Quds field hospital in Aleppo was hit by an airstrike. It killed 30 people, including two health workers, and injured 60 people, completely destroying the facility.
Dr. Abdo El Ezz, an Aleppo physician, says, "The war in Syria has violated and destroyed anything called "agreements" or "an agreement" or "human rights" or anything humanitarian...Hospitals are looking for coffins because people are pouring in; some are completely burned and soon die. We need to bury them...Some people wish to die so they can finally rest and not live in constant terror and see constant destruction."
An estimated 37,000 children have been born as refugees and over 83,000 Syrian pregnant women are living as refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, placing a heavy burden on those countries health and social systems. For example, Lebanon is planning for 600,000 schoolchildren this year -twice the number currently enrolled.
Syrian children refugees are at very high risk for mental illness and have poor access to education. In the Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan, for example, one-third of all children displayed aggressive and self-harm behaviors. According to Europol, Europe's policy agency, more than 10,000 thousand unaccompanied refugee and migrant children have disappeared, raising fears they are being exploited and used for sex.
The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) rate among Syrian refugee children is comparable to that observed among other children who experienced war. A study by the Migration Policy Institute shows that refugee children who are not formally educated are more likely to feel marginalized and hopeless, making them probable targets for radicalization.
What is experienced by Syrian children is also experienced by refugee children coming from other countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Few people have expressed as poignantly as James Fenton, the tragic fate of these children. In his poem "Children in Exile" Fenton writes,
'What I am is not important, whether I live or die -
It is the same for me, the same for you.
What we do is important. This is what I have learnt.
It is not what we are but what we do,'
Says a child in exile, one of a family
Once happy in its size. Now there are four
Students of calamity, graduates of famine,
Those whom geography condemns to war...'
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A Better World Is Possible: A Father's Day Note
Jun 19, 2016
Dear Rosie,
Two days ago you turned ten. Where does the time go?
I vividly remember the feeling of looking at you for the first time the night you were born, on the eve of Father's Day. I sang you a song (Danny Boy) that I'd sung many times into your mommy's belly. You stopped crying and gazed into my eyes with a look of recognition. Like the Grinch, my heart grew three times that day, and nothing has been the same since!
I always tell you how much I love you - more than all the stars, all the grains of sand, all the drops of water in the ocean, to infinity. But words can never quite capture the feeling. Elizabeth Stone said that "making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." That's how it is.
When I see other dads and moms with their kids, I know that they are feeling something similar. From San Francisco to Syria, Indianapolis to Iraq, the love that we parents have for our kids is universal. I've imagined from your first moments about how the collective power of love in the hearts of parents (and grandparents) everywhere could be harnessed to change the world. If we the parents demanded decisions be made with the best interests of all kids in mind, there could be no war, or children dying needlessly of preventable diseases, or inaction on the biggest problem of all -- climate change. Parents united against global warming and global warring.
And yet, when I look around in these last days of your single digit years, I see awful spasms of violence - a mad man with a gun mowing down dozens of uncles, aunts, sons, daughters in Orlando, while bombs are dropped on hospitals tending to injured children in Syria. And I see temperatures and oceans rising, ice sheets melting at an alarming rate, droughts intensifying, wildfires raging, while the presidential candidate Donald Trump says it's all a hoax invented by the Chinese (he really said that, look it up).
Reading the news, a dad could sink into despair. But that would betray the pact I made with myself when we decided to have a child--to stay hopeful that a better world is possible and that I'd do what I could to help bring such a world about. A world that is, in the words of Carl Sagan, "worthy of our children." Your birth, and the birth of each baby, is a vote for hope and determination regardless of appearances in the moment.
That's why I work with Climate Parents, a group of parents and grandparents around the country, taking action to help prevent catastrophic climate change so that we leave you and all kids everywhere a livable planet. And in doing that work every day, I see signs of hope emerging in so many places - the solar panels and wind turbines sprouting up like daffodils in springtime, the coal-fired power plants shutting down, the students suing governments for stronger climate action, the school boards voting to teach students the truth about climate change, the countries of the world agreeing in Paris to keep temperatures from rising to unbearable levels.
We may or may not do enough. Things could go either way. But when you are reading this years from now, by the light of a solar-powered lamp, know that your dad, mom, and millions of others who burned brightly with love for our kids did what we could when we knew the stakes, as we watched our hearts running around--laughing, singing, playing and dreaming of the world to be.
Love forever,
Daddy
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Donald Trump Strikes Fear... Even in South Sudan
What trumps the horrors of a hellscape? The Donald!
May 03, 2016
LEER, South Sudan -- I'm sitting in the dark, sweating. The blinding white sun has long since set, but it's still in the high 90s, which is a relief since it was above 110 earlier. Slumped in a blue plastic chair, I'm thinking back on the day, trying to process everything I saw, the people I spoke with: the woman whose home was burned down, the woman whose teenage daughter was shot and killed, the woman with 10 mouths to feed and no money, the glassy-eyed soldier with the AK-47.
Then there were the scorched ruins: the wrecked houses, the traditional wattle-and-daub tukuls without roofs, the spectral footprints of homes set aflame by armed raiders who swept through in successive waves, the remnants of a town that has ceased to exist.
And, of course, there were the human remains: a field of scattered skulls and femurs and ribs and pelvises and spinal columns.
And I'm sitting here -- spent, sweaty, stinking -- trying to make sense of it all about 10 feet from a sandbagged bunker I'm supposed to jump into if the shooting starts again. "It's one of the worst places in the world," someone had assured me before I left South Sudan's capital, Juba, for this hellscape of burnt-out buildings and unburied bones that goes by the name of Leer.
A lantern on a nearby table casts a dim glow on an approaching aid worker, an African with a deep knowledge of this place. He's come to fetch his dinner. I'm hoping to corral him and pick his brain about the men who torched this town, burned people alive, beat and murdered civilians, abducted, raped, and enslaved women and children, looted and pillaged and stole.
Before I can say a word, he beats me to the punch with his own set of rapid-fire questions: "This man called Trump -- what's going on with him? Who's voting for him? Are you voting for him?" He then proceeds to tell me everything he's heard about the Republican frontrunner -- how Trump is tarnishing America's global image, how he can't believe the things Trump says about women and immigrants.
Here, where catastrophic food insecurity may tip into starvation at any time, where armed men still arrive in the night to steal and rape. ("They could come any night. You might even hear them tonight. You'll hear the women screaming," another aid worker told me earlier in the day.) Here, where horrors abound, this man wants -- seemingly needs -- to know if Donald Trump could actually be elected president of the United States. "I'm really afraid," he says of the prospect without a hint of irony.
Of Midwifery and Militias
After decades of effort, the United States " helped midwifethe birth" of the Republic of South Sudan, according to then-Senator, now Secretary of State John Kerry. In reality, for the South Sudanese to win their independence it took two brutal conflicts with Sudan, the first of which raged from 1955 to 1972, and the second from 1983 to 2005, leaving millions dead and displaced. Still, it is true that for more than 20 years, a bipartisan coalition in Washington and beyond championed the southern rebels, and that, as the new nation broke away from Sudan, the U.S. poured in billions of dollars in aid, including hundreds of millions of dollars of military and security assistance.
The world's youngest nation, South Sudan gained its independence in 2011 and just two and a half years later plunged into civil war. Since then, an estimated 50,000 to 300,000 people have been killed in a conflict pitting President Salva Kiir, a member of the country's largest tribe, the Dinka, against Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer and the vice president he sacked in July 2013. That December, a fight between Dinka and Nuer troops set off the current crisis, which then turned into a slaughter of Nuers by Kiir's forces in Juba. Reprisals followed as Machar's men took their revenge on Dinkas and other non-Nuers in towns like Bor and Bentiu. The conflict soon spread, splintering into local wars within the larger war and birthing other violence that even a peace deal signed last August and Machar's recent return to the government has been unable to halt.
The signature feature of this civil war has been its preferred target: civilians. It has been marked by massacres, mass rape, sexual slavery, assaults of every sort, extrajudicial killings, forced displacement of local populations, disappearances, abductions, torture, mutilations, the wholesale destruction of villages, pillaging, looting, and a host of other crimes.
Again and again, armed men have fallen upon towns and villages filled with noncombatants. That's exactly what happened to Leer in 2015. Militias allied with the government, in coordination with Kiir's troops -- the Sudan People's Liberation Army, or SPLA -- attacked the town and nearby villages again and again. Rebel forces fled in the face of the government onslaught. Fearing execution, many men fled as well. Women stayed behind, caring for children, the sick, and the elderly. There was an assumption that they would be spared. They weren't. Old men were killed in their homes that were then set ablaze. Women were gang raped. Others were taken away as sex slaves. Whole villages were razed. Survivors were chased into the nearby swamps, tracked down, and executed. Children drowned in the chaos.
Those who lived through it spent months in those waterlogged swamps, eating water lily bulbs. When they returned home, they were confronted yet again by pitiless armed men who, at gunpoint, took what meager belongings they had left, sometimes the very clothes off children's backs.
This is a story that ought to be told and told and retold. And yet here in Leer, like everywhere I went in South Sudan, I couldn't get away from Donald Trump. So many -- South Sudanese, Americans, Canadians, Europeans -- seemed to want to talk about him. Even in this ruined shell of a town, Trump was big news.
The "Endorsement" Heard Round the World
Back in Juba, I settle down in the shade of my hotel's bar on a Saturday morning to read the Daily Vision. In that newspaper, there's a story about the dire economic straits the country finds itself in and the violence it's breeding, as well as one about violations of the 2015 peace pact. And then there's this gem of a headline: "Nobody Likes Donald Trump. Not Even White Men."
A fair number of South Sudanese men I ran into, however, did like him. "He mixes it up," one told me, lauding Trump's business acumen. "At least he speaks his mind. He's not afraid to say things that people do not want to hear," said another. I heard such comments in Juba and beyond. It leaves you with the impression that if his campaign hits rough shoals in the U.S., Trump might still have a political future in South Sudan. After all, this is a country currently led by a brash, cowboy-hat-wearing former guerrilla who mixes it up and is certainly not afraid to speak his mind even when it comes to threatening members of the press with death.
Compared to Kiir, who stands accused by the United Nations of war crimes, Trump looks tame indeed. The Republican candidate has only threatened to weaken First Amendment protections in order to make it easier to sue, not kill, reporters. Still, the two leaders do seem like-minded on a number of issues. Kiir's government, for example, is implicated in all manner of atrocities, including torture, which Trump has shown an eagerness to employ as a punishment in Washington's war on terror. Trump has also expressed a willingness to target not only those deemed terrorists, but also their families. Kiir's forces have done just that, attacking noncombatants suspected of sympathizing with the rebels, as they did during the sack of Leer.
So it didn't come as a surprise when, in March, the Sudan Tribune -- a popular Paris-based website covering South Sudan and Sudan -- reported that Salva Kiir had endorsed Trump. It even provided readers with the official statement issued by Kiir's office after his phone call with the U.S. presidential candidate: "Donald Trump is a true, hard-working, no-nonsense American who, when he becomes president, will support South Sudan in its democratic path and stability. South Sudan, the world newest nations [sic], is also looking forward to Donald Trump's support and investment in almost all the sectors." Trump, said the Tribune, "expressed his thanks for the endorsement and said he will send his top aides to the country to discuss further the investment opportunities."
It turned out, however, that the Tribune had been taken in by a local satirical news site, Saakam-- the Onion of South Sudan -- whose tagline is "Breaking news like it never happened." That the Tribune was fooled by the story is not as strange as it might first seem. As journalist Jason Patinkin observed in Quartz, "Kiir's reputation is such that many Africa watchers and journalists found the story plausible."
I, for one, hadn't even bothered to read the Tribune article. The title told me all I needed to know. It sounded like classic Kiir. I almost wondered what had taken him so long to reach out. But South Sudan's foreign ministry assured Patinkin, "There is no truth to [the story] whatsoever."
For now, at least.
Will He Win?
There's a fever-dream, schizophrenic quality to the war in South Sudan. The conflict began in an orgy of violence, then ebbed, only to flare again and again. As the war has ground on, new groups have emerged, and alliances have formed while others broke down. Commanders switch sides, militias change allegiances. In 2014, for example, Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang, the rebel army's spokesman, called out the SPLA for "committing crimes against humanity." Kiir, he said, had lost control of his forces and had become little more than a puppet of his Ugandan backers. Last year, Lul split from Machar to form the "South Sudan Resistance Movement/Army" -- an organization that attracted few followers. This year, he found a new job, as the spokesman for the military he once cast as criminal. "I promise to defend SPLA in Media Warfare until the last drop of blood," he wrote in a Facebook post after being tapped by Kiir. Of course, Machar himself has just recently returned to Juba to serve as first vice-president to Kiir.
In a country like this, enmeshed in a war like this, it's hardly surprising that ceasefires have meant little and violence has ground on even after a peace deal was signed last August. Leer was just one of the spots where atrocities continued despite the pact that "ended" the conflict.
More recently, the war -- or rather the various sub-conflicts it's spawned, along with other armed violence -- has spread to previously peaceful areas of the country. Cattle-raiding, a long-standing cultural practice, now supercharged by modern weaponry and military-style tactics, has proven increasingly lethal to communities nationwide and has recently even bled across the border into Ethiopia. A South Sudanese raid into that country's Gambela region last month killed 208 Ethiopians, and the attackers abducted 108 women and children while stealing more than 2,000 head of cattle.
While in Leer, I do end up talking at length with the Trump-intrigued aid worker about local cattle raiding, as well as the killings, the rapes, and the widespread looting. I was always, however, aware that, like many other foreign aid workers and locals I meet, what he really wanted was an American take on the man presently dominating U.S. politics, an explanation of the larger-than-life and stranger-than-life figure who, even in South Sudan, has the ability to suck the air out of any room.
"This Trump. He's a crazy man!" he tells me as we sit together beneath an obsidian sky now thick with stars. He reminds me that he's not authorized by his employer to speak on the record. I nod. Then he adds incredulously, "He says some things and you wonder: Are you going to be president? Really?!"
A couple of other people are around us now, eating dinner after a long, sweltering day. They, too, join in the conversation, looking to me for answers. I find myself at a loss. Here, in this place of acute hunger ever-teetering on the brink of famine, here, a short walk from homes that are little more than hovels, where children go naked, women wear dresses that are essentially rags, and a mother's dream is to lay her hands on a sheet of plastic to provide protection from the coming rains, I do my best to explain seething white male anger in America over "economic disenfranchisement," "losing out," and being "left behind," over Donald Trump's channeling of "America's economic rage." I'm disgusted even articulating these sentiments after spending the day speaking to people whose suffering is as unfathomable in America as America's wealth is unimaginable here.
Some of Leer's women fled with their children into the nearby swamps when armed men swept in. Imagine running blind, in the black of night, into such a swamp. Imagine tripping, falling, losing your grip on a small child's hand as shots ring out. Imagine that child stumbling into water too deep for her to stand. Imagine slapping frantically at that water, disoriented, spinning in the darkness, desperate to find a child who can't swim, who's slipped beneath the surface, who is suddenly gone.
And now imagine me trying to talk about the worries of Trump supporters "that their kids won't have a chance to get ahead."
I really don't want to say any more. I don't want to try to make sense of it or try to explain why so many Americans are so enraged at their lot and so enthralled with Donald Trump.
The aid worker lets me off the hook with another assessment of the Republican candidate. "Things he says, they are very awkward. When he says those things, you think: He's crazy. How can he be a presidential candidate?"
How to respond? I'm at a loss.
"If he wins the election, America will not have the influence it's had," he says.
Maybe that's not such a bad thing, I counter. Maybe not having such influence would be good for the world.
It's the truth. It also completely misses the point. Even here, even as I'm revolted by talking about America's "problems" amid the horrors of Leer, I'm still looking at things from a distinctly American vantage point. I'm talking about theoretically diminished U.S. power and what that might mean for the planet, but come 2017 he's going to be out in the thick of it, in this or some other desperate place, and he's obviously worried about what the foreign policy of Donald Trump's America is going to mean for him, for Africa, for the world.
I go silent. He goes silent. Another aid worker has been listening in, piping up intermittently between mouthfuls of rice and goat meat. "So is he going to win?" he asks me.
I look over at him and half-shrug. Everyone, I say, thought Trump was going to flame out long ago. And I stop there. I'm too spent to talk Trump anymore. I don't have any answers.
My companion looks back at me and breaks his silence. "It can't happen, can it?"
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