JustPeace#44

News

• 
  Locke Confident of Sri Lanka Peace Deal
  
  . Keith Locke, who has just returned from a fact-finding mission to Sri Lanka, is confident that the peace process will survive in-fighting between the country’s President and Prime Minister. While Sri Lanka has been out of the news recently, negotiations between the LTTE and the Government have continued, these have been put at risk by the power struggle between the President and the Prime Minister. Read
  
  Keith’s release
  
  , for a general overview of the Peace process and recent events, see
  
  the BBC backgrounder page
  
  .

Action

• 
  Auckland
  
  Tuesday, November 25, 7-30pm, St Columba Centre, 40 Vermont St, Ponsonby.
  
  Inside Indonesia’s Hidden War on Aceh
  
  . Hear William Nessen, free lance journalist give a talk plus data show and video footage on his 6 weeks behind the lines with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and 40 days in an Indonesian jail after the Indonesian militaries attack on the province earlier this year.

  William Nessen will be visiting other centres in New Zealand, keep a watch on
  
  Peace Movement Aotearoa
  
  for dates, venues and other information on him.

Analysis

• 
  Controlling the International Arms Trade
  
  is always going to be difficult while the five members of the UN Security Council (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China – in order of value of arms exports) account for 88% of the Global Arms Trade. The New Zealand Government has been under some criticism for being ‘
  
  active in providing assistance in the export of [New Zealand] Defence products
  
  ‘

  In the week that saw both Armistice Day and the annual conference of the New Zealand Defence Industries Association in Wellington it is timely to promote
  
  Shattered Lives: the case for International Arms Control
  
  . This report from Control Arms, a joint campaign run by Amnesty International, IANSA (International Action Network on Small Arms) and Oxfam released in October is a large and comprehensive review of the issue and some possible solutions.

• 
  Continuing Collateral Damage
  
  . A new
  
  report from MEDACT
  
  details the toll on Iraqi’s health and the damage to Iraqi’s health infrastructure and environment from the invasion of Iraq. Below is an excerpt from a Guardian article on the report.

  ‘
  
  Health will suffer for generations
  
  ‘

  James Meikle, Guardian health correspondent
  
  Wednesday November 12, 2003

  “Iraqis will suffer the health consequences of the second Gulf war “for years, maybe generations”, says a report warning of an “information black hole” on what is truly happening in the country.

  “The international health charity Medact said yesterday that up to 9,565 civilians might have been killed between the start of the war in March and October 20, and more were at risk as already weakened public services collapse.

  “A breakdown in law and order, lack of security and damage to infrastructure threatened further casualties.

  “Even in 2001, Unicef, the UN’s children’s organisation, reported that one in eight children under five died and one in four was chronically undernourished.

  “The Medact report,
  
  Continuing Collateral Damage
  
  , estimates that 22,000 to 55,000 people on all sides, including in the military, had died in the war and its aftermath. The figure is far lower than the 49,000 to 261,000 the UK-based charity forecast before the war, largely because military resistance collapsed quickly.

  “But disruption to the country’s health was still considerable, says the report’s author, Dr Sabya Farooq, pointing to dangers such as leftover explosives and ammunition – Unicef has said this has hurt more than 1,000 children – landmines, and risks of cancers from toxic dust from weapons with depleted uranium…”).
  
  JustPeace was produced by Christine Dann, Tim Hannah and Keith Locke, MP

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