Category Archives: Politics

European Union, Government, Politics, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United States

Eastern Europe is growing stronger amid the war in Ukraine

EUROPEAN UNION

Intro: The balance of power in the European Union is shifting eastward

AS 2022 draws to a close, Russia’s war in Ukraine rages unabated. Russian President Vladimir Putin sees what he still calls a “special military operation” as a life-or-death contest with the United States and its NATO allies. The West, for its part, considers the war a threat to its own security and has thrown its weight behind the defence of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.

There is an inherent problem, however, with framing the war as a clash between the US and Russia. It underplays the spirit, resilience, and enormous daily sacrifices of Ukrainian’s in resisting their mighty neighbour bent on re-creating a Moscow-centred imperial order. Had there been no resolve among Ukrainians to fight back aggression and revanchism then no amount of military and financial aid for Kyiv would have been sufficient to thwart the Kremlin’s ambition. 

That Eastern European countries and nations have agency and are more than pawns in the power struggles of larger players is imperative to understand. And it goes well beyond the example of Ukraine.

Poland has become a much more significant and influential player in European defence than it ever was. It is not just the fact that it is a front-line country which takes in many displaced refugees fleeing war from Ukraine, nor that it provides a land route to supply its neighbour with weapons and humanitarian aid, but, strategically, Poland is also ramping up its defence spending from 2.2 per cent of its gross domestic product to a record 3 per cent in 2023. That is one of the highest rates within NATO. The money will go into modernising and expanding its military forces and could make the Polish army one of the largest on the continent.

Warsaw is purchasing tanks and self-propelled howitzers from South Korea in a deal worth $5.8bn and will acquire state-of-the-art F35 fighter jets from the US in the future.

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Environment, Government, Politics, Society, United Nations, United States

Globalised food systems are making hunger worse

LONG-READ: FOOD SUPPLY

Intro: Food disruptions from the pandemic to the war in Ukraine show the need for strong local supply chains. Yet the US and others won’t learn

FROM COVID-19 to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine to climate change, it seems all the calamities afflicting the world are converging to make hunger worse. The latest United Nations report on hunger finds the increase in the number of undernourished people globally this year has eliminated any progress over the past decade.

Yet while the world has not seen hunger at these levels for years, scholars have long warned that a catastrophe was looming. The world’s food system is more interconnected and complex than ever, built upon layers of transnational dependencies. It is why a war in Europe can exacerbate a famine in Somalia — a country which imports most of its wheat and saw its supply of bread all but collapse overnight when exports of Ukrainian wheat ceased.

But instead of reducing the fragility of the food system, the latest international efforts led by the United States to end hunger are only exacerbating it — especially for Africa — by globalising the system further. Just this week, US President Joe Biden has promised African leaders gathered in Washington that the United States is “all in” on Africa. But the US needs to make sure that it is “all in” the right way, particularly when it comes to food.

The current crisis began when multiple pandemic-related shocks converged on the system, including lockdowns, a global economic downturn, and illnesses among food system workers, especially factory workers and migrant labourers. Climate change-related weather events, inflation and the Ukraine war have aggravated these stresses, rendering a complex and highly industrialised food system unable to serve the neediest people in the world even as it maintains steady supplies for the Global North.

It is increasingly clear that in moments when the world is under severe stress, globalisation is not a strength but a weakness, not a foundation for the system’s stability but a reason for its fragility. Any calamity anywhere in the world — whether a viral outbreak, drought or conflict — is a shock to the entire system, but one felt most acutely by the most vulnerable people and in the most vulnerable places.

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Britain, Government, Legal, Politics, Society

Society calls on UK Government to keep the Human Rights Act

BILL OF RIGHTS

MORE than 150 civil society groups have written to the UK Government urging a commitment to retaining the Human Rights Act and rule out its replacement by a British bill of rights.

The position of the prime minister in regard to the proposed legislation is in doubt but Dominic Raab, having been reappointed as justice secretary, appears adamant to push through the new laws. It had previously been shelved under Liz Truss’s leadership.

The British Institute of Human Rights (BIHR) and 157 other organisations including Amnesty International UK, Human Rights Watch, Liberty, Child Poverty Action Group, End Violence Against Women Coalition, and Unison, have written to Rishi Sunak calling on him to abandon the plans to scrap the HRA once and for all.

The letter, which was written to coordinate with global human rights day – Saturday, 10 December – says they “write with heavy hearts that the UK government’s approach to our domestic law risks taking us further and further away from the legal protection of human rights”.

It continues: “Human rights laws are, necessarily, uncomfortable for governments because they set limits on the exercise of power, limits which are for the benefit of people.

“No UK government need fear this … [it] should embrace the fact that our Human Rights Act provides universal protections for everyone and ensures those with public power are accountable.”

The 1998 legislation incorporated into domestic law rights are set out in the European convention on human rights. The convention, which was ratified by 46 member states (including the UK), was intended to ensure governments could not dehumanise and abuse individuals’ rights.

Giving evidence to parliament’s justice committee, Mr Raab, who has also returned to the role of deputy prime minister, said the bill of rights would “restore some common sense to articulate a more UK-wide set of priorities for human rights and to curb some of the abuses of it”.

He also claimed it would protect victims and the public “perhaps more than was possible under the HRA,” for instance by boosting free speech.

But critics of the proposals have called it a “rights removal bill”. The BIHR specifically highlights several weaknesses and says it would:

. Fundamentally weaken the right to respect for private and family life.

. Remove the legal duty on courts and public bodies to interpret other laws compatibly with human rights, exposing people to the arbitrary use of laws with no checks.

. Limit access to justice by adding barriers to bringing a human rights case to court.

. Destroy the positive obligation on public bodies to take proactive steps to protect people from harm, including protecting domestic and child abuse survivors.

Sanchita Hosali, the chief executive of the BIHR, said: “Despite the rhetoric, even a cursory reading of the rights removal bill shows it does not create new rights or strengthen existing protections. It does the exact opposite, weakening people’s current rights and access to them.

“The rights removal bill is unprincipled, unevidenced, unworkable and unnecessary.”

BIHR said the signatories represented the interests of millions of people across the UK.

Other organisations that have put their names to the letter include Stonewall, the Muslim Council of Britain, Freedom from Torture, the Runnymede Trust, Rethink Mental Illness, Parkinson’s UK, and the Prison Reform Trust.

A spokesperson for the government said: “The government is committed to protecting human rights and will always continue to champion them internationally and at home.”

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