A Malawian couple became the latest gay rights activists to face a judicial backlash for their public stand on sexuality this week, when they were sentenced to 14 years hard labor for “gross indecency.” Western governments and human rights campaigners around the globe, including 1980s gender-bending pop icon Boy George, have leapt to the couple’s defense. Malawian authorities arrested Tiwonge Chimbalanga and his partner, Steven Monjeza, on Dec. 26, 2009, after the two participated in a traditional engagement ceremony. Judge Nyakwawa Usiwa-Usiwa sentenced the pair on Thursday, following their convictions on charges of “gross indecency” and “unnatural acts.” “I will [...]
Peacekeeping is a tragic business. That may seem obvious, if only because, when reading about United Nations peacekeeping operations, you come across the word “tragedy” a lot. It describes what happened in Bosnia and Rwanda all too neatly. There’s no better word for what took place in Haiti, where more than 100 U.N. personnel were among the 250,000 dead in January’s earthquake. But, as English professors have tried to explain to generations of dozy students, “tragic” is more than just a synonym for “awful.” Great tragedies — Oedipus Rex, Macbeth, Scarface — aren’t just about suffering. They center on protagonists [...]
It is now widely recognized — including in the highest-level policy statements of the United Nations, European Union, African Union and NATO — that managing conflict requires a multidimensional, comprehensive, whole-of-government or integrated approach. All these approaches have a similar aim: to achieve greater harmonization and synchronization among the international and local actors, as well as across the analysis, planning, implementation and evaluation phases of the program cycle. One-dimensional or single-facet conflict-management responses are now viewed as superficial and counterproductive, in that they address only some aspects of a wider system. They thus tend to distort, shift or redirect tensions [...]
