The Permanent Five and their power to veto any resolution reached has meant a democratic deficit in decision-making, the organisation’s lack of success in its Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, and the apparent lack of action in Yemen despite labelling it ‘the largest humanitarian crisis in the world’ are just three examples of the UN appearing to fail to ‘create and maintain international order’.

Our panel will discuss the future of the United Nations – in its totality – including its work on peace and security, human rights, and socio-economic development, as envisioned by the UN Charter, and explore the question: Is the UN still fit for purpose in the changed context of the world today where forces of populist nationalism seem ascendant?

Chair

Contributing Editor to the Financial Times, John Lloyd, has won multiple awards for his work in journalism, including; Specialist Writer of the Year in the British Press Awards and Journalist of the Year in the Granada What the Papers Say Awards. In the early 1970s, he worked for Time Out as Belfast Correspondent during the infamous period of the Troubles, and then went on to work for The Times and the New Statesman. In 2006 John co-founded Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and currently directs the Axess Programme on Journalism and Democracy. He is also an editorial member of Prospect; the advisory board of the Moscow School of Political Studies.

Speakers

Kul Chandra Gautman is a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and Assistant Secretary-General for the UN. He carried out the role of Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Nepal, his home country, on International Affairs and the Peace Process 2010-2011. Kul currently serves on a vast number of both international and national boards including the Programme Committee for Oxfam GB Council, which he chairs. As a former senior official of the UN, Gautman has extensive experience in international diplomacy, development cooperation, and humanitarian assistance. In Augst this year he wrote “Global Citizen from Gulmi”. In the book, the former diplomat recounts his journey from the hills of Gulmi to the halls of the United Nations.

The Right Honourable Clare Short was the first Secretary of State for International Development1997-2003. After her resignation over the Iraq war she wrote her award-winning book; ‘An Honourable Deception?: New Labour, Iraq, and the Misuse of Power’, discussing the true effects of the centralisation of decision-making in Number 10. Ms Short gave a notable speech in 2001; ‘Making Globalisation Work for the Poor’; expressing her view that globalisation could be shaped as a new phase in the modern world to improve the lives of everyone. In June 2009, she received an Honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Ulster in response to her services to international development. The Right Honourable Lady also appeared before the Chilcot inquiry, condemning Blair for his attempt to obtain consent to invade Iraq by deceit. Ms Short is known for her outspoken nature and fierce criticism of the Blair administration, particularly of his ‘reckless’ decision to go to war with Iraq without a clear mandate from the United Nations. In 2010 she retired from parliament after serving as MP for Birmingham Ladywood for 27 years (1983-2010).

Credits

Directed and reported by: Nawal Al-Maghafi
Filmed by: Mohammed Al-Mikhlafi
Produced by: Darius Bazargan

• Disclaimer: this film contains graphic content. Please enquire if you are booking tickets for adolescents or children.

Chair

Dr Gabriele vom Bruck is a Senior Lecturer on Social Anthropology of the Middle East at SOAS university.  She has conducted extensive research in Yemen and published on elites, religious movements, consumption, gender and photography.  She is the author of Islam, Memory and Morality in Yemen (Palgrave 2005) and co-editor of The Anthropology of Names and Naming (Cambridge UP 2006).  She is currently completing a biography of a Yemeni woman.

Speakers 

Nawal Almaghafi is a BBC Correspondent/ filmmaker   specialised on the Middle East. She has reported extensively from Yemen, focusing on the humanitarian situation and the West’s involvement in the conflict. In her latest investigation, The Funeral Bombing, she crossed the frontline in Yemen from areas under rebel control to areas under government control to find out who was responsible for the deadliest attack in Yemen’s 21 month conflict. She was also amongst the BBC team that revealed BAE’s sales of sophisticated mass surveillance technology to repressive states in the Middle East for the BBC production: Weapons of Mass Surveillance.

Rasha Mohamed is Amnesty International’s Yemen researcher. She has gone on numerous research missions to Yemen since the armed conflict erupted in March 2015. Her focus has been primarily the range of human rights violations and international humanitarian law (“laws of war”) by all sides to the conflict. For the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, this has included documenting numerous unlawful airstrikes which have killed and injured civilians, and the use of internationally banned weapons like cluster bombs. For the Huthi armed group, it has included recruitment of child soldiers, arbitrary detentions and impeding the flow of humanitarian aid.
Outside Yemen, she has also been very active in pushing for more rigorous arms control policies to be adhered to by governments who fuel the conflict by transferring arms to Saudi Arabia and its allies. In particular, she has been involved in work to lobby the Brazilian, US and UK governments over their arms supplies to the coalition, and her research formed the basis of Amnesty International’s intervention in a current UK High Court Judicial Review of the UK government’s arms transfers to Saudi Arabia.

Dr Glen Rangwala is a lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. Trained in political theory and international law, he completed a doctorate on political and legal rhetoric in the Arab Middle East. His focus on the politics of the modern Middle East, especially the Levant (including Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine) and the northern Gulf region are on the forms of political debate in these regions; and the character of the state and state-building processes. He work also includes theories of contemporary conflict, particularly the political economy of modern war.

As the country sinks into an increasingly repressive regime under the helm of current President Abdulla Yameen – and strengthens ties with China and Saudi Arabia – we will be joined by exiled former president Mohamed Nasheed, journalist and author of The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy JJ Robinson, and others, to discuss the current situation in this small yet turbulent archipelago.

With at least 100 Maldivian jihadists now fighting in Syria and Iraq, a significant share of the country’s modest population, we will also discuss the increasing role of Islamism – as well as the implications for the wider South Asia region. We will explore hopes for the future and the role of an increasingly-repressed media in supporting an eventual transition to democracy – all as the impending threat of climate change on the low-lying islands continues to loom large.

This event will be chaired by BBC News South Asia editor Charles Haviland.

Mohamed Nasheed is a politician, environmental and human rights activist, and served as the fourth, and first democratically-elected, President of the Maldives from 2008 until 2012. In 2010, Newsweek included President Nasheed in its list of the ‘World’s Ten Best Leaders’, and he is frequently dubbed the ‘Mandela of the Maldives’. Nasheed is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Anna Lindh Prize in recognition of his work promoting human rights, democracy and environmental protection, and the James Lawson Award for the practice of non-violent action.

JJ Robinson is a journalist and author of The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy. He spent four years working as an editor of the Maldives’ first independent English-language news outlet, and was among the only foreign witnesses to the 2012 coup d’état that toppled Nasheed‘s government. He was the Maldives’ Reuters correspondent and its Reporters Without Borders representative, and has appeared on the BBC, Radio Australia, Al Jazeera and other outlets as a Maldives expert.

Abbas Faiz is an independent South Asia specialist focusing on a number of countries including the Maldives. Until early 2016, he worked as a senior researcher with Amnesty International. He has travelled widely within the region and has authored scores of reports, press releases and policy documents during his 30-year working time with Amnesty, covering human rights concerns in almost all countries of South Asia including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. He has given in-depth interviews on human rights issues to a range of media, including Al Jazeera, ABC, CNN and the BBC, and has written for the Guardian, New Statesman and the Lancet amongst others. He has closely monitored the human rights situation in the Maldives over the past 20 years, and has provided strong support during this period to the country’s ongoing movement for democracy and human rights protection.

Di Giovanni is no stranger to conflict, with work spanning the first Palestinian intifada, the Bosnian war and much of the upheaval of the Arab Spring. Her latest book is the result of numerous official and unofficial visits to Syria, weaving accounts of human tragedy into the country’s wider political picture. For di Giovanni, focusing on those trapped in a war beyond their control was the most striking and impactful way to cover the conflict.

“For me, far more interesting than being on the frontline in Homs, was going to the military hospital of Assad’s soldiers,” di Giovanni said. “I went early one morning when they were having their mass funeral… These were the regimes soldiers so you would think that we could perceive them as monsters… They were kids, they were 18, 19 years old… they just found themselves in this time and this place, but they were basically just kids.”

Sackur asked di Giovanni what it was like to witness Syria’s “terrible descent into full-on civil war,” and the rise of Daesh.

“As early as 2013 we started seeing, or maybe even earlier in 2012, the radicalisation of Aleppo… My trips back there became increasingly difficult,” commented di Giovanni. She recalled one particular incident that made her realise how dangerous the situation had become for Western journalists, in which herself and photojournalist Nicole Tung were attacked by an angry crowd frustrated by the West’s failure to intervene in the war.

“In the worst days in Sarajevo, the population never turned on us… And now we were getting attacked, as women we were being subjugated even with our former colleagues, and worse than that, Steve (Sotloff) and Jim (Foley) were beheaded.”

A major focus was the West’s inaction over the Syrian war, and the frustration that this has generated. Referring to a recent spate of Russian airstrikes on hospitals and schools in northern Syria, one audience member asked if there was any hope of bringing Assad and Putin’s impunity to an end.

Di Giovanni responded by saying Assad shouldn’t be allowed to continue his reign of power, but also conceded that “the more that Daesh continue to push and do these horrific acts publicly… the more that people who before had been supporting the opposition went back to supporting Assad. If you pull Assad out right now – this is a man with blood on his hands, a war criminal – you’re going to have a power vacuum in Damascus… There is no one yet ready to step into his shoes.”

Sackur added that a more cynical view would “argue that for all of the hopes we had for street politics and uprisings… actually removing the Gaddafi’s, or the Assad’s, or the Mubarak’s unleashes a form of chaos that is worse.”

An audience member asked what Assad’s endgame might be, given that Daesh’s actions are bolstering support for his regime. Di Giovanni replied: “I think he’s won. The Russians are on his side. He’s managed to turn the UN into a laughing stock. The diplomatic channel has basically been made a joke.”

On a final note, an audience member asked di Giovanni if she had any stories of hope from Syria. She recounted meeting members of the White Helmets, a group of ordinary civilians in Syria who rescue people from the wreckage of airstrikes – despite the enormous risks to their own lives, particularly in light of Russia’s ‘double-tap’ bombing strategy. “In war time you get horrible things, but you also get the human spirit capable of doing good… I came away thinking superheroes really do exist.”

Click here to find out more information on the White Helmets.

Purchase a copy of The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches From Syria here.

United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown joined chair of the Global Partnership for Education and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Overseas Development Institute’s Executive Director Kevin Watkins at the Frontline Club on 25 January 2016 to discuss Funding for Syrian Child Refugees, on a panel moderated by foreign correspondent David Loyn.

Former PMs @JuliaGillard @OfficeGSBrown campaigning for 1 million school places for young Syrians #auspol @SBSNews pic.twitter.com/Jw2Fr97rgr

— Brett Mason (@BrettMasonNews) January 25, 2016

The panel discussed the aim of the new UN International Commission on Financing Global Education, chaired by Brown, to provide one million school places for Syrian refugee children in neighbouring countries, as well as the wider challenge of educating refugees globally. The Frontline event took place ten days ahead of a major UN-sponsored Syrian relief conference in London.

“At our current rates of change,” said Gillard, “it won’t be until 2111 that the world first sees a generation of sub-Saharan African girls who universally have a primary and lower secondary education. That means no one in this room will live to see it. It’s too long to wait.”

Since 2010, the enrolment of Syrian refugee children in regional schools has increased from 60,000 to 200,000, “largely down to the advocacy work that Gordon has done,” said Watkins.

“It has both demonstrated what is possible, and allows us to hang our heads in shame at what we’ve allowed to happen. It’s taken an entire primary school generation to stop us sitting on our hands,” Watkins continued.

Many of the school places found for the refugees are in “double shift” schools. Existing schools double the number of students that can learn by running the same programme twice in one day. Typically, the existing students join one shift and the refugee children join another.

“Four years ago, an average Syrian child had the same prospects of getting through primary school as a kid in a high-performing middle income country like Thailand,” said Watkins. “In the space of a single generation, they’ve gone to education indicators close to Sierra Leone and South Sudan. You can see these consequences on streets across the region – there’s an epidemic of child labour. They’re forced into labour markets and early marriage.”

Watkins quoted from Graça Machel’s 1996 report on children in conflict: “It’s difficult to imagine greater depths to which humanity can sink when you look at the violation of rights and freedoms of children in conflict.”

“Half the children who are out of school in the world are in conflict zones,” said Brown. “It’s now said it is safer to be a soldier in a conflict zone than to be a girl because of the risk of child marriage, child trafficking and child labour.”

Gillard emphasised that increasing education for refugee children isn’t just about more school places, but about raising the quality of the education the children receive.

While there are “121 million children of primary and lower secondary age out of school” in the world, she said, there are “250 million who get access to some schooling… but still can’t do most basic literacy and numeracy tasks.”

“Is there a great deal of point in having kids go and sit in this thing called a school if they aren’t learning? In many countries where we’re trying to improve education systems, there are nowhere near enough trained teachers. It requires us to think how… to deliver education in a systemised way. We’re thinking about some breakthrough models that can be scaled up and rolled out in some of the poorest places on earth.”

Brown said: “it is almost ridiculous to think that when you’re in desperate need, it’s only the public sector who’s going to contribute. We need foundations, we need charities, philanthropists, businesses to make their contribution to humanitarian aid.

“We need to find other governments who are prepared to take this up. Both Julia and I tried to make our governments pro-education in the global development sphere, but we need more governments to take up the cause, and we need to find philanthropists and foundations. People are prepared to give to education in their own country, but when it comes to global education – very little.”

Intimate event at @frontlineclub w @JuliaGillardGPE, Gordon Brown & @kwatkinsodi on #education funding for #refugees pic.twitter.com/sNzCAveOXJ

— Sophie Gaston (@sophgaston) January 25, 2016

Audience member Dr Mairead Collins from Christian Aid raised concerns of families in Lebanon that the late timetables in double shift schools prevented them allowing their daughters to go to school in the dark, for safety reasons. How does the commission address these obstacles, she asked?

“Safe transport to schools is a well-understood problem,” said Brown, and money will be directed towards it. “Safe schools are a very important concept now,” he said. “We have assumed schools are safe havens without doing anything about it. But you’ve got to make the schools safe.”

Gillard agreed, saying “overwhelmingly, funds for education come from domestic governments, and for many domestic governments, until they’ve got robust taxation systems you’re always going to be running behind the curve.”

Augustus Della-Porta, trustee of Educate a Child International, said he has an eight-year-old niece in the besieged town of Yarmouk in Syria who has never been to school. What about education for the children still in Syria?

Chris Gunness, spokesman for UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said children in Palestine often tell him that they hear education offers hope – but there is no political situation in which this hope can be realised. “In Gaza, there’s 44% unemployment”, Gunness said, “and in Lebanon, Palestinians are banned from more than 100 professions. What does it mean to have education in the absence of a political process?”, he asked.

“Education isn’t the solution for every problem,” said Gillard, but “it’s hard to imagine a problem that isn’t advantaged by the benefits that education brings.”

“If people are educated, there is more capacity to negotiate differences and find solutions to conflict, to look for peace and stability, and to build institutional government systems.”

Brown said there are “new proposals for economic zones in these countries so that people denied the chance to work as refugees are finally given a chance to work within economic zones. The World Bank is now involved in Jordan and Lebanon, and I think will be involved in Turkey… [These proposals] will prevent a lot of child labour. Because [at present] children become the only income earners.”

“Despite the failure of the political process, we cannot leave these children without an education,” Brown said.

“We cannot allow them to become not just a lost generation, but a discontented and dispossessed generation, with all the implications that 200 million young people growing up in the Middle East have for the security of that region and the rest of the world.”

On 3 November at the Frontline Club, photojournalist Greg Constantine spoke to UNHCR’s UK representative Gonzalo Vargas Llosa about Nowhere People, Constantine’s body of ten years of photographic work on the world’s estimated 10m stateless people.

A stateless person “under law is considered no citizen of any country,” said Constantine. “Once citizenship is severed, it opens people up to an array of deprivation of rights.”

The number of global stateless may exceed 10m, according to Vargas Llosa, as “very few governments want to give exact statistics on stateless people inside their borders.”

Constantine’s talk at the Frontline Club comes on the first anniversary of the launch of I Belong, a UN campaign to “end the scourge of statelessness by 2024,” said Vargas Llosa.

Constantine showed images from his meetings with stateless peoples, including the Rohingya in Bangladesh and Malaysia; Nubians in Kenya; Filipinos in Saba, Malaysia; the Dali in Nepal; the Dom in Iraq; ethnic Haitians in the Dominican Republic; and Roma in Italy.

“Roma fell through huge legal gaps where citizenship was not extended to them” after end of Yugoslavia says @grconstantine @frontlineclub

— Charlotte Beale (@CharlotteAGB) November 3, 2015

Constantine also shared quotes from stateless men and women he had met, including from Jafar, a stateless Rohingya in Bangladesh: “Because we don’t have citizenship, we are like a fish out of water, flapping and unable to breathe. When a fish is out of water, he suffocates.”

“The legacy of colonialism is very much a part of people becoming stateless in Asia and Africa,” said Constantine. “The creation of the idea of ‘others’ that came from French colonialism is responsible for the Ivory Coast’s stateless people… Denial of citizenship is directly attached to Ivorian conflict and the 2002 civil war was borne from a clash of identity – us and them.”

He added: “Most times, you find stateless people are not refugees. Most have never left the country in which they were born.”

“The Rohingya is by far the most extreme example of statelessness in the world today,” Constantine continued, despite them playing a huge role in the economy of southern Bangladesh.

“40,000 Rohingya are living segregated lives in Internationally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps [in Burma],” said Constantine. They are put up in “tents… that psychologically make them think their situation as IDPs is temporary… The conflict has been manufactured by Burmese central government, by 40 years of oppressive policies that pitted communities against each other.”

“The administrative tactics states use to humiliate their stateless fly under the radar of the world’s media,” said Constantine. Discrimination against ethnic Haitians in the Dominican Republic has been “manifested into policy.”

Vargas Llosa added that in the Dominican Republic, “statelessness is the result of deliberate, well-planned, well-executed policies” by the government.

While “huge strides” have been made in Iraq, which has “some of the most progressive laws in the Middle East,” Domari gypsies still suffer. Similarly, after the break-up of Yugoslavia, “Roma fell through huge legal gaps where citizenship was not extended to them.” Because of certain laws, generations of Roma in Italy “are not afforded opportunities to become citizens,” Constantine said.

“Gender discriminating nationality laws are all over the Middle East and Africa,” added Constantine. He highlighted this with a comment on the situation in Lebanon – a young subject born to a Lebanese mother and a stateless father must inherit her father’s stateless condition. 27 countries globally limit a mother’s ability to pass her nationality onto her family.

A member of the audience pointed out that “the state is often an enemy of the people it is supposed to be administering,” and asked Constantine and Vargas Llosa their opinion of the role of the state in creating statelessness crises.

“What strikes one from Greg’s images is the evil a state can do,” Vargas Llosa agreed. “What happens when the caregiver of human rights ends up being the vehicle which perpetrates the denial of those rights?”

Constantine deplored the “sovereign right of a state to determine who its citizens are and who they aren’t.”

Visit the Nowhere People website to find out more.

Opening the debate that took place at the Frontline Club on 9th April to mark the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Mukesh Kapila, former humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, claimed that the legacy of this experience is to to make us all Rwandans, “because a crime against humanity in one place becomes a crime against all humanity everywhere.”

L-R Mukesh Kapila, David Belton, Sam Kiley, Williams Nkurunziza and Eric Murangwa Eugene

His Excellency Williams Nkurunziza, High Commissioner of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Kingdom, began by assessing the strides made over the last 20 years.

“By every measure of assessment, if you look at Rwanda – the basket case of 1994 has become the model state of 2014.”

The success and effectiveness of this transformation can be attributed, according to Nkurunziza, to three choices made by President Kagame and the government directly after the genocide. To “chose to be together” by resisting the potential for victims and perpetrators, forced to live together in the aftermath of genocide, to engage in a cycle of retribution. “To chose to be accountable”, by ensuring a “new inclusive political dispensation… where a winner cannot take all [and] where even the losers must participate in the process of governance to ensure all Rwandans must be inheritors of the mess that was left in 1994”. Finally, Nkurunziza cited the importance of thinking beyond the traditional paradigm, specifically in the engagement of women as equal participants in the process of governance.

Most importantly it is this path of restorative justice over punitive justice which has enabled the country to move towards reconciliation at such pace.

David Belton, who experienced the genocide first hand whilst reporting for the BBC, did not question this assessment of the government’s, but rather “ where one’s identity, where one’s past, one’s memories exist in this new paradigm.” For Belton, it becomes a question of how one deals with the past and forge a new identity for the future within this “post-trauma society”.

For Eric Murangwa Eugene, who survived the genocide, it is the three decades leading up to 1994, in which the political establishment enforced the idea of difference and the notion of ‘the enemy within’, which means that the process of reconciliation becomes a much longer process.

Kapila elaborated on this by stating that the success of the reconciliation process was based on the fact that a determination “not to hide the truth” was not viewed just in a psychological sense, but through a political and institutional approach,

“Reconciliation succeeded because it wasn’t just a sentimental thing, there was a very strong sense of justice and truth-telling that went along with it. There is a question of whether reconciliation can be forced? One has to say the right thing before it becomes internalised and then doing the right thing follows.”

When questioned over why it is the West that should be asked to carry the burden of moral responsibility for international inventions, Kapila remarked that the lessons learned show that “nobody saved Rwanda… outside people cannot save these things. The real resistance comes from within. The role of the international community is to make sure we don’t stand in the way. And when we do intervene we have to make sure there is proper accountability”. He cited specifically Kofi Annan’s sanitisation of reports transmitted to the UN security council.

https://twitter.com/HilaryStauffer/status/453963539938832384

To this Belton interjected, instead arguing that the experience of Rwanda proves that the international community could and should have intervened very quickly and effectively with as little as 5000 UN peacekeeping troops.

“It is a question of ‘just cause’, as defined by Tony Blair in 1999, as to whether you had the moral right, whether you could do it militarily, whether you are in for the long term…”

“The critical thing is that you have to have transparency, which enables everyone to have a better understanding about who is shaping events. I think we are at a place now, where you see the connivance by the internal community for what it is… as cowardice and failure.”

Returning to a question of accountability and responsibility, Ambassador Nkurunziza stated that “fixing Rwanda’s problems should be left to Rwandans… however, that does not absolve the international community.”

“[The genocide] didn’t happen because people didn’t know about it… it happened because people didn’t care.” He went on to emphasise the need for dialogue between the West and Rwanda.

For Belton, however, while this new dialogue is essential it should not be at the expense of denying the past, or the historical identities that have shaped Rwanda.

“You need space for people to develop their own narratives, to develop the confidence to be able to say I am Rwandan and I am also a Tutsi. Can they develop their own stories, their own histories which are not contaminated – which can lead to the shared value system that enables them to make choices about who they want to be rather than being told what to be?”

Watch or listen to the event here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-rwandan-genocide-lessons

On 6 April 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali airport. The events that followed saw bitter ethnic divisions engulf the country: neighbour turned on neighbour and in the space of 100 days an estimated 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were killed.

At the time the international community was heavily criticised for its slow response and now declassified diplomatic cables have revealed that the US, Britain and the United Nations were explicitly warned that a “new bloodbath” was imminent in Rwanda.

Twenty years on we will look at how communities in Rwanda have been reconciled, the political, social and economic strides the country has taken and what more still needs to be done. We will also ask if the international community has learnt its lessons and if it can ensure that such a failure to react will never occur again.

Chaired by foreign affairs editor of Sky News, Sam Kiley. Through the 90’s he served as Africa bureau chief for The Times, covering the genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).

The panel:

David Belton worked as a producer at BBC Newsnight in the 1990s where, amongst many foreign assignments, he covered the civil war in Bosnia and the genocide in Rwanda. In 2002, he co-wrote the story and produced the award-winning feature film Shooting Dogs based on real events that had taken place during the Rwandan genocide. He has since produced and directed many critically acclaimed and award-winning documentaries for British and American television. When The Hills Ask For Your Blood: A Personal Story of Genocide and Rwanda is his first book.

Eric Murangwa Eugene is a Rwandan survivor of the 1994 genocide and former Rwandan international football player who founded Football for Hope, Peace and Unity (FHPU Enterprise) an initiative which uses sport and football in particular to assist the transformation of Rwandan community for social change and reconciliation here in the UK and in Rwanda itself.

Mukesh Kapila, CBE is professor of Global Health and Humanitarian Affairs at the University of Manchester. Previously he was Under Secretary General at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan. He was the first UK government official to enter Kigali in 1994 after the genocide. He is author of Against a Tide of Evil.

His Excellency Williams Nkurunziza is the high commissioner of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Kingdom and non-resident ambassador to Ireland. His previous posting was as high commissioner to India. Prior to his diplomatic career, he served as director general of the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotional Agency (RIEPA), during which time he worked to reposition post-genocide Rwanda in the international marketplace as an ideal investment destination and a reliable trading partner. During this time, he also served on President Paul Kagame’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council.

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-fog-of-peace

In war there is rarely a single action or answer that will bring peace. As we are seeing with the conflict in Syria, the process of negotiation and resolution is incredibly complex. As the focus swings from intervention to international conferences, how do you begin to forge an agreement?

In a unique account of the process of conflict resolution, The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution offers an insight into psychological theories, geopolitical realities and first-hand peace-making experience.

The authors will be joining us to share their analysis of international diplomacy and the complexities of conflict resolution. They will be exploring the question of intervention and examining the impact of the changing nature of warfare and technology.

Chaired by Channel 4 News presenter, Jon Snow.

With:

Gabrielle Rifkind is the director of the Middle East programme at Oxford Research Group. She is a group analyst and specialist in conflict resolution immersed in the politics of the Middle East. Rifkind combines in-depth political and psychological expertise with many years’ experience in promoting serious analysis and discreet dialogues with groups behind the scenes.

Giandomenico Picco served as under-secretary general of the United Nations and was personal representative of the secretary general for the United Nation year of dialogue amongst civilisations. He led the task force negotiations to end the Iran-Iraq war and the freedom of Western hostages from Lebanon. Over decades he helped securing the freedom of 127 individuals unjustly detained from 4 different countries.

On 5 November, No Fire Zone was shown at Riverside Studios  as part of a series of Between the Lines follow up events hosted by Frontline Club and DocHouse. This documentary chronicles the last 138 days of the civil war in Sri Lanka, revealing the brutal tactics employed by the Sri Lankan army and government against the Tamil population. The screeninng was followed by a lively Q&A with director, Callum Macrae, who introduced the film as evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and warned the audience to prepare themselves accordingly for the images they were about to see.

The film uses footage taken by civilians, Tamil Tigers and government soldiers, plus testimonies from civilian survivors and UN officials, forming a harrowing and disturbing picture of the final stages of the 26-year civil war, where an estimated 40,000 – 70,000 Tamil civilians were massacred by the government’s military. The title of the film refers to the government-allocated no fire zones that were set-up as safe areas for Tamil civilians, which the military then purposefully attacked.

All the footage used in the film has been authenticated as genuine by forensic pathologists. However, as Macrae told the audience, the Sri Lankan government continues to maintain that the videos in the film, which have mostly been taken using camera phones or satellite phones, are fabrications, as are the estimated death count and disappearances.

The Sri Lankan government has strongly opposed the release of this film, using their influence to pressure other countries into preventing screenings. A recent Malaysian screening was raided and one of the organisers was arrested for censorship charges, facing a possible three year prison sentence. Macrae is also having problems obtaining an Indian visa to attend screenings of the film, an application process which he started in February.

One audience member asked why the videos and photos of the atrocities presented in the film did not make it into our news media or social media the same way images from the Arab Spring did? Macrae responded that the Western media needs to ask themselves that question, as the images did make their way onto the Internet, as events were occurring, and British Tamils were staging large campaigns and protests to draw attention to the atrocities.

The Sri Lankan government dismissed the videos as propaganda. They were able to gain international support from allies, as much of the world already viewed the Tamil Tigers as terrorists, and were able to hide behind a ‘shameless’ adoption of the West’s rhetoric of the “war on terror”, creating a ‘conspiracy of silence’, Macrae said.  This view was challenged, towards the end of the session, by a Sinhalese audience member who accused the film and Channel 4 of bias against the government, which was vehemently rejected by Macrae.

Much of the Q&A focused on the lack of action by the international community. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) is due to be held in Colombo towards the end of November, despite criticism from international human rights organisations. Currently the only government who has expressed their opposition to this decision is Canada, who will boycott the conference.

The film depicts the UN leaving Sri Lanka, and presents testimonies from former UN staffers on their distress over this decision, and the abandonment of their role as protectors. Macrae was also critical of the UN, noting that the Human Rights Council passed a resolution congratulating Sri Lanka on ending the civil war. He stated that the UN made no real effort to intervene while in Sri Lanka, and strongly believes that they consciously concealed information about the number of deaths by preventing information being revealed during the time. Furthermore, Macrae added:

“I believe [that by staying there] it wasn’t just that it was complicit in what was going on, it provided an active cover for what was going on, because . . . people were assuming the UN was providing some kind of monitoring process. I think, in a sense [the UN] facilitated the ongoing massacres by saying nothing.”

He did, however, acknowledge that some progress has been made since, in part due to his film, and is hopeful that the UN’s criticism of Sri Lanka’s actions will grow stronger. He noted that the film has been shown to UN delegations also, with positive responses.

Congrats to @Callum_Macrae on powerful documentary showing truth to power #NoFireZone pic.twitter.com/2oFxaYPJZX

— James Denselow (@jamesdenselow) November 5, 2013

Many audience members wanted to know what they could do as individuals, and what the international community is doing or should be doing to hold Sri Lanka to account. Macrae stated that the intention of the film was to increase awareness of the war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government and hopes that it will be used as a form of evidence for justice in the future. He continued:

“Without justice you can’t have peace and reconciliation, and to get justice you need truth”

He asked that everyone put pressure on the UK government, by contacting their MPs and the Prime Minister, to remain true to their promises to raise these issues with Sri Lanka during CHOGM.  He pointed out that David Cameron maintains that it is a better decision to participate in the conference to bring attention to the issues, but that the government has made no sign of opposing Sri Lanka’s actions.

Macrae remains hopeful, however, that India, an influential country in the region with a large Tamil population, will decide to boycott CHOGM. He told the audience that he has received threats over his decision to travel to  Sri Lanka during CHOGM, due to the opposition to this film.

A shortened version of No Fire Zone can be viewed on Channel 4 4od and there are a number of international events lined up.