News
Mailian Refugees await food distribution.
The ongoing conflict in northern Mali between radical armed groups and Malian and French security forces has become a source of concern to its neighboring countries and beyond. Mali’s instability and fragility is attributed primarily to the scarcity of resources, a weak state and bad governance where understaffed institutions and rampant corruption have contributed to a state of disarray. Just as the security apparatus cannot maintain the government’s sovereignty and authority, state institutions are unable to provide justice, education, and healthcare to Mali’s citizens.
UNHR Committee members and secretariat.
On April 24-26, The Hague Institute welcomed the United Nations Human Rights Committee for their first informal roundtable in The Hague.
01 May 2013 After violent conflict, local governments face enormous challenges. For stability and development, it is necessary to improve and maintain citizens’ security, integrate internally displaced persons or ex-combatants into the local community and overcome existing divisions within the society. Citizens will also need access to basic services – such as roads, water, schools and health care – and tangible economic opportunities. Finally, local authorities will often need to regain the trust of their populations.
These issues and challenges for peace building at a local level will be addressed in a two-week course that is developed in cooperation with The Hague Academy for Local Governance. During the course, we distill lessons from cases in Afghanistan, Burundi, South Sudan and the Balkans, apply theories and concepts to the local context of the participants, and discuss the impact of donor interventions on peace and stability.
We have a few places left so be quick to take part in this interesting course.
24 Apr 2013 On April 18, 2013, Abiodun Williams, president of The Hague Institute for Global Justice, gave a lecture on conflict prevention as part of the
Bread and Brains Lunch Series held by the
Society for International Development and the
Humanity House.
After introducing the Institute and its work, Dr. Williams made the case for conflict prevention. In his opinion, conflict prevention is needed morally, to prevent the loss of human life; financially, in times of economic austerity, as prevention costs less than reaction; and strategically, as conflicts are not restricted by national borders.
23 Apr 2013 In the beginning of April Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails staged a hunger strike to protest the death of a fellow inmate, who they say died of medical negligence at the hands of prison authorities. At the U.S. Guantanamo Bay naval base, a rising number of U.S. terrorist suspects have resorted to voluntary fasting to protest their indefinite detention. In 2012 the imprisoned former prime minister of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko, launched a hunger strike against alleged vote rigging by the party of the current president, Viktor Yanukovych. Hunger strikes are usually used by (political) prisoners to communicate their distress against their confinement or the conditions surrounding their imprisonment. As frequent as the phenomenon is, there are no common rules regarding how countries can respond or best balance the conflicting interests at stake.