January 22 will mark the first anniversary of entry-into-force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The TPNW prohibits the possession, development, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons for the 59 countries that have so far ratified it. Groups around the country are planning events to celebrate this occasion including protests, bannering at nuclear facilities, ringing of church bells, vigils, and zoom events. Click here for a calendar of events. You can find all kinds of resources for groups and individuals, including downloadable banners and signs, sample letters to the editor, videos and more at Resources for Actions in the Age of the Ban Treaty. Check the Nuclear Ban Treaty Days of Action Facebook group, and be sure to post your actions!

Regrettably the TPNW has been rigorously opposed by the United States and other nuclear armed states, as well as those allied states under “nuclear umbrellas.” However, the five original nuclear-armed states, the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France and China are required “to pursue negotiations in good faith” to end the nuclear arms race “at an early date and to nuclear disarmament" under another treaty. That treaty, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), entered into force in 1970. The States Parties to the NPT meet for month-long review conferences every five years. The 10^th NPT Review Conference, originally scheduled for May 2020 and postponed several times due to Covid, was supposed to take place starting January 4 at the United Nations in New York, but it was postposed again due to the surging pandemic. Nonetheless, after months of planning and preparation, there’s been a burst of activity around the NPT.

On January 3, the U.S., Russia, U.K., France and China issued a Joint Statement by the Leaders of the of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races. Remarkably, despite rising tensions among them, the “N-5” came together to issue a superficially reassuring joint statement, starting out with an affirmation “that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons issued a response, ‘Nuke-Speak’ Should be Turned into Real Action to Prevent Nuclear War, End the Nuclear Arms Race, and Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, welcoming this affirmation but calling out the N-5’s Orwellian “Nuke-speak.” With potential flashpoints over Ukraine and Taiwan, the risk of another use of nuclear weapons is as high as it has ever been. The nuclear disarmament process is stalled, and the five NPT Nuclear-Weapon States cannot credibly claim they are meeting their NPT obligations.
On January 4, Peace & Planet went ahead with its Online International Conference: Building our Movements & Impacting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, featuring distinguished speakers from Finland, Argentina, Israel, Russia, Iran, Germany, South Korea, USA, South Africa, Norway and Japan. Read the Peace & Planet Message to the 2022 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference and to the International Community.

On January 10, a comprehensive Joint Statement from Civil Society to the States Parties of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, was released by Reaching Critical Will on behalf of more than 90 organizations worldwide including United for Peace & Justice. The joint statement presents three key messages: Global support for the NPT is strong, but its long-term viability cannot be taken for granted; the grave state of global affairs and the rising risk of nuclear conflict and arms racing requires new and bolder leadership from responsible states; and those that resist change also say the “environment” is not right for further progress, but responsible actors everywhere are rising to the challenge. A video presentation is available here.
More people are becoming aware that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a strong proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1963, he wrote: “I am convinced that the church cannot remain silent while mankind (sic) faces the threat of being plunged into the abyss of nuclear annihilation. If the church is true to its mission, it must call for an end to the arms race.” On January 11, 2022, Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico released a new pastoral letter urging the local community and the world to join “a renewed commitment to the cause of peace” with the goal of eliminating all global nuclear weapons arsenals. Titled, “A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament,” the 50-page document can be downloaded here.

Two months before his tragic assassination, Dr. King declared:  “We have played havoc with the destiny of the world and we have brought the whole world closer to nuclear confrontation . . . I am still convinced that the struggle for peace and the struggle for civil rights as we call it in America happen to be tied together.” Some groups are linking the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday (this year, Jan. 17) with celebrations of the one-year anniversary of entry-into-force of the TPNW on Jan. 22. Click here for Resources for MLK Holiday and Ban Treaty Anniversary, including a banner, quotes, and a sample letter to the editor.

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, has picked up Dr. King’s unfinished work, weaving the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, environmental devastation, militarism and the war economy and a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism, into one “moral fusion” campaign. The Poor Peoples Campaign Jubilee Platform calls for cutting U.S. military spending by half including by closing 60% of U.S. foreign military bases, ending the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, and dismantling and eliminating nuclear weapons.

It is increasingly clear that the multiple national and global crises we are confronting, including nuclear weapons, climate change, systemic racism, a growing wealth gap and rising national authoritarianisms arise from the same foundational causes, and that we are unlikely to prevail on any of them as single issues. We need to come together as never before to build political power through durable, diverse, multi-issue coalitions, networks, and networks of networks based on our shared commitments to universal, indivisible human security.

United for Peace & Justice is proud to be a partner in the Poor People’s Campaign. With active committees in 45 states, and support from an extraordinary range of constituencies including labor unions, faith organizations, racial justice, anti-poverty, environmental and peace groups, the Poor People’s Campaign is building towards a generationally transformative Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Worker’s Assembly & Moral March on Washington and to the Polls, June 18, 2022. Get involved. Join your state committee. Find a bus coming to Washington D.C. from your state on June 18!

Forward together, not one step back!
The UFPJ Coordinating Committee

FOLLOWING MLK QUOTE THIS IS APPROPRIATE

 

HISTORIES OF INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS IN AN ERA OF TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION

With Crystal Gail Fraser, Ph.D. University of Alberta

Sunday, January 30, 2022 3 pm EST 

In May of 2021, the remains of 215 children were found in an unmarked mass grave next to the former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. In June, 751 human remains were uncovered next to the former Marieval residential school in Saskatchewan. Other sites have been investigated since these appalling discoveries.  The history of residential schools became widely known in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) (2007–2015). In its report, the TRC estimated that "of the approximately 150,000 children who attended residential schools, at least 3,200 never returned home. Since then, the figure has been revised significantly upwards; it is believed that at least 6,000 children died in the residential schools."  In this presentation, Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser will share the history of Indian Residential Schools, discuss the tragedy of the thousands of unmarked graves of Indigenous children who were institutionalized, and how we need to continue focusing on these hard truths during this era of reconciliation.

Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser is Gwichyà Gwich'in, an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta, an intergenerational Indian Residential School Survivor. Her work is dedicated to better understanding colonial histories in northern Canada and the complexities of residential schooling histories through oral histories and working with survivors. Crystal co-authored 150 Acts of Reconciliation for the Last 150 Days of Canada's 150, which has been foundational to advancing reconciliation among Canadians.

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DID THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT BUILD SCHOOLS TO MURDER CHILDREN?

THE WRONGS DONE AT INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS SHOULD BE ACKNOWLEDGED, BUT WHAT WE’RE TOLD BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA SEEMS INTENDED LESS TO INFORM THAN TO PROMOTE A PARTICULAR IDEOLOGY. THE GOVERNMENT SEEMS HAPPY TO SUPPORT SLANTED REPRESENTATIONS OF REALITY TO ADVANCE PROGRESSIVE CAUSES.

Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson 

December 15, 2021

I first learned of the Bryce Report in a doctoral dissertation about the Anglican Church’s involvement with Indian Residential Schools (Woods, 2012). The Report (Bryce, 1907) outlined tragic health conditions faced by indigenous students, and its publication resulted in the Anglican Church’s Canadian Synod recommending that the schools be closed. So when the Globe and Mail ran a commemorative story on Dr. Peter Bryce (Fraser et al., 2021), I eagerly anticipated more nuggets about this fine man’s career. I was left both disappointed and concerned.

With the collapse of the buffalo and the fur trade, the chiefs who were signatories of the treaties with Canada realized that a modern education was essential to survive in the new economy. The promise of education is included in every treaty they signed.

Bryce was a medical officer with the federal government who in 1907 reported that the 35 Indian Residential Schools he visited were often overcrowded, frequently lacked proper nutrition for students, and had substandard sanitation. He said that twenty-four percent of students who entered these residential schools died of tuberculosis before their 16th birthday – double the rate in their home communities.

This data is grim enough, but the article’s authors concluded in their first paragraph, “These effects of colonialism aren’t a dark chapter now being revealed, but rather the main plot in a narrative that defines Canada… The colonial attempts to assimilate were genocidal.” The word “genocide” refers to any attempt to eliminate a racial or ethnic group from the human gene pool, for example, by deliberately injecting people of a particular race with a lethal virus. In a later work, Bryce (1922) states that the sick aboriginal children were infected not in the schools themselves but in their home communities. Nonetheless, the authors of this memorial article accuse the federal government of criminally “turning a deaf ear” to Bryce’s report by not closing the schools. The phrase “deaf ear” implies the government of Wilfrid Laurier ignored it. In actual fact, in 1908 Frank Oliver, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, tabled a proposal on behalf of the federal government to replace the residential schools with a system of day schools. With both the Anglican Synod and the federal government agreeing to close the Indian Residential Schools, what went wrong?

In defiance of their national synod, the Western Anglican Church joined with the Catholics, Presbyterians and Methodists lobbying to keep the residential schools open. This effort was crucially supported by such new organizations as “The Friends of the Indian and Half-Breed Population of Alberta” that included indigenous leaders. Bryce himself had not recommended the closure of these schools, just the opposite. He was concerned that school attendance in 1905-06 stood at only 52% of the school age population and he recommended that more Indian residential boarding schools be built.

He (Bryce, 1907) said that school attendance had been dropping since 1901 because :
the distance between the schools and the reserves made travel between them difficult
school staff were often poorly trained

pupils had little opportunity for practical success after graduation

the number of pupils at any given school was dependent on the abilities of principals to recruit students

Indian Agents frequently failed to support the schools, and

parents generally disliked having their children so far from home.

The authors of the Globe article offered another unsupported assertion with, “The Christian churches operated these schools for profit and their model supported the genocidal efforts of the federal government” (Fraser et al., 2021, para 6). In fact, no churches made a profit off these schools and some years the Anglican Synod spent half of its national revenue to subsidize them (Woods, 2012).

It is possible that the Globe and Mail authors were unaware of the 1907 attempt to close the schools, but one wonders why important points such as these contained in the Bryce Report were ignored by the scholars commemorating his legacy.

With the collapse of the buffalo and the fur trade, the chiefs who were signatories of the treaties with Canada realized that a modern education was essential to survive in the new economy. The promise of education is included in every treaty they signed. But residential schools were not the only solution. In 1910, after petitioning the federal government, Little Pine reserve in Saskatchewan got its own day school. Reverend Stan Cuthand later recalled, “Our parents had never had schools before, but they wanted us to learn English. When the school was built, there was so much cooperation between everyone that everyone on the reserve sent their kids there” (Donnelly, 1998, p. 7).

Schools on-reserve where children went home after each school day were not unique to Little Pine. According to the Bryce Report, during the1905-06 school year, 694 students attended 74 such day schools. By way of comparison, 1,739 attended 38 boarding schools; and, 693 students were in 8 industrial schools. The boarding and industrial schools are generally grouped together as “Indian Residential Schools” in today’s parlance, but historically the industrial schools were meant to pay for their operating costs through student labour while the boarding schools were dependent on a government per capita grant under a program that began in 1898. Bryce recommended the use of boarding schools because they were closer to reserves than industrial schools and the principals were generally more closely in touch with the parents. Day schools, he opined, generally offered lower quality education.

The authors of the Globe article offered another unsupported assertion with, “The Christian churches operated these schools for profit and their model supported the genocidal efforts of the federal government” (Fraser et al., 2021, para 6). In fact, no churches made a profit off these schools and some years the Anglican Synod spent half of its national revenue to subsidize them (Woods, 2012). In the initial deal brokered with the federal government, the churches would pay the operating costs of schools if the government paid the capital costs. The churches planned to pay for these costs through industrial activity such as farming, ranching, fishing or logging, with the students learning skills they could later use after graduation. When it became clear that these “industrial schools” would never become financially self-sufficient, the government began paying the per capita grant. The boarding schools were dependent on this grant and church donations, with the resulting financial incentive to accept any student, no matter how diseased. As I stated in my article on Residential School Syndrome (Robertson, 2006), the motivation of the churches was not financial but religious – they were in the business of saving souls.

The debates about the merits of different types of schools continued into the modern era. For example, despite having a new day school in their community by the 1970s, half the parents in Stanley Mission continued to send their children to the Indian Residential School in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, some 240 kilometres distant. In the 1980s, I co-authored a paper (Robertson and Redman, 1988) to transfer the educational function of the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School to a board made up of chiefs and councillors. Indian Residential Schools had been closed in most of the rest of Canada by 1969, but in Saskatchewan the schools remained open at the request of indigenous people, with boards consisting of chiefs and counsellors responsible for the physical plant and the Department of Indian Affairs responsible for instruction. In preparation for our report, we asked the chiefs why they wanted to keep these schools open. They told us that the quality of education was higher than was generally found in band day schools because the concentration of larger numbers of students allowed for better programming, including sports. In addition, they said, the residential schools were a place to send children from dysfunctional families.

During my forty years as a practicing psychologist, I have heard from clients who viewed their own residential schools as safe havens from their families. This child welfare function was underscored when I gave psycho-educational assessments to forty children at the Prince Albert Indian Residential School in 1999. It had officially closed as a residential school three years earlier, but was still open as a child welfare institution with the same staff and program.

During my forty years as a practicing psychologist, I have heard from clients who viewed their own residential schools as safe havens from their families.

We all abhor the conditions in which many aboriginal children were malnourished, beaten and sexually molested in residential schools, but conditions in these schools varied with time and place. For example, although tuberculosis was epidemic during Peter Bryce’s time, he found three schools where no children had died. He said the principals in these schools used modern methods including proper ventilation to combat the disease. That fact, neglected in the Globe and Mail article, is more damning of the government of the day than the generalization given because it shows the government could have done more. But was this genocide?

A problem with reducing history to a single political narrative and making the facts fit that narrative is that we then lose the lessons that history can teach. I knew Rev. Cuthand personally both as a child when visiting his reserve and as an adult at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College. He reversed the usual stereotype by pushing education first and religion second. The education he commended included the technologies of mind that flowed from the European Enlightenment. It is those technologies of mind that drove the scientific, commercial and industrial revolutions, and he wanted aboriginal people to be part of that. Bryce agreed. By the time he wrote The Story of a National Disgrace (Bryce, 1922), the Indian Act had been amended making school attendance for children age 7 to 17 compulsory, but the federal government still had not forced the schools to implement the medical practices necessary to successfully combat tuberculosis.

Bryce’s recommendations in his new tract were that:
more Indian Residential Schools be built of the boarding school variety
the government take control of the administration of these schools
the school curricula used should be that of the provinces, and
the health of students should be guarded by proper medical inspections.

He was accusing the government of negligence, not genocide.

Both Bryce and Cuthand were arguing that aboriginal children should receive an education that was based on science and reason. In The Medicine Wheel Revisited (Robertson, 2021a), I suggest that while Enlightenment technologies transcend culture, they are tied to Europe through a process of historical descent. Each culture can better appropriate technologies by linking them to their own cultural antecedents. The Indian Residential Schools were not equipped to accomplish this, but cultures aboriginal to North America have the capacity to make such appropriations today. Leaving out facts that are inconvenient to a political narrative will not help us achieve this goal.


A problem with reducing history to a single political narrative and making the facts fit that narrative is that we then lose the lessons that history can teach.

While it is possible that Fraser, Logan and Oxford were ignorant of the history of indigenous schooling leading up to the Bryce report, they have no excuse for distorting the words that are actually in the report. Their stated purpose as outlined in the first paragraph of their article was to outline “the main plot in a narrative that defines Canada….” The main plot of Wokism, a political ideology that combines aspects of social justice, postmodernism, Marxism, and Fascism, without being true to any (Coughlin and Higgins, 2019; Pluckrose and Lindsay, 2020; Robertson, 2021b) is to undermine Western civilization and the Enlightenment concepts of science, reason, and humanism upon which that civilization is based. This is not what educational pioneers like Bryce and Cuthand fought for.

It was disappointing that the Globe and Mail chose to deny their readers the broader view by refusing to run an earlier version of this rebuttal. Even more disturbing is the federal government’s involvement in the construction of this Woke-friendly narrative. Two of the authors of the originating article (Fraser and Oxford) list their professional affiliation as “Defining Moments Canada,” a new federally funded organization whose website declares their purpose is to “model innovative commemorative digital methods to engage young Canadians with their history.” From this article it would appear this engagement is skewed in a political direction.

https://humanistperspectives.org/


REFERENCES

Bryce, P. H. (1907) Report on the Indian Residential Schools of Manitoba and the North West Territories. Ottawa
Bryce, P. H. (1922) The Story of a National Disgrace. James Hope & Sons.
Coughlin, S. and R. Higgins, R. (2019) Re-remembering the Mis-Remembered Left: The Left’s strategy and tactics to transform America. Unconstrained Analytics.
Donnelly, P. (1998) Scapegoating the Indian residential schools. Alberta Report, 25(6), 6-12.
Fraser, C., T. Logan, and N. Orford (2021, July 17). A doctor’s century-old warning on residential schools can help find justice for Canada’s crimes. Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-doctors-century-old-warning-on-residential-schools-can-help-find/
Pluckrose, H. and J. Lindsay (2020) Cynical Theories: How activist scholarship made everything about race, gender, and identity and why this harms everybody. Pitchstone Publishing.
Robertson, L.H. (2006) The residential school experience: Syndrome or historic trauma. Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health, 4(1), 1-28.
Robertson, L.H. (2021a) The Medicine Wheel Revisited: Reflections on indigenization in counseling and education. SAGE Open, 11(2), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211015202
Robertson, L.H. (2021b) Year of the Virus: Understanding the contagion effects of Wokism. In-sight, 26(B). Retrieved March 1, from https://in-sightjournal.com/2021/02/22/wokism/
Robertson, L. H., & Redman, P. (1988). A Comprehensive Review of Educational Programs and Support Services of the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School. Regina, SK: Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School
Woods, E.T. (2012) The Anglican Church of Canada and the Indian Residential Schools: A Meaning-Centred Analysis of the Long Road to Apology. London School of Economics and Political Science, London.


AUTHOR: LLOYD HAWKEYE ROBERTSON
Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson is President of the New Enlightenment Project: A Canadian Humanist Initiative. During his career he has been Director of Life Skills for the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College; Director of Health and Social Development for the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations; Director of Mental Health for Northern Saskatchewan; Coordinator of Training and Program Development for Child and Family Services, Lac La Ronge Indian Band; and president of the Kikinahk Indian and Metis Friendship Centre. His book, The Evolved Self: Mapping an understanding of who we are, was published by the University of Ottawa Press.

 

Chinese envoy calls for efforts to protect women in conflict, promote women's role in peace processes

(Xinhua) 08:54, January 19, 2022

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Tuesday called for efforts to protect women in conflict and to promote women's role in peace processes.

Protecting women in armed conflict and promoting their participation in political and peace processes is an important part of the Security Council's women, peace and security agenda. To achieve these goals, the council should stick to the right direction and stay on the right course, said Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations.

Women affected by armed conflict are all entitled to security and protection, regardless of whether they are part of the peace process or not. They should be treated equally without exception, he told a Security Council open debate on women, peace and security.

"To protect them requires a comprehensive approach and collective efforts. Parties to conflict should fulfill their obligations under international humanitarian law and renounce all violence against women, including sexual violence," he said.

China supports relevant UN organizations in actively carrying out their work in accordance with their respective mandates in this regard. The international community should intensify relief efforts in line with the UN guiding principles for humanitarian assistance and meet the basic living needs of women affected by conflict. Countries with historical responsibilities for hot-spot issues are duty-bound to provide more financial and in-kind support, said Zhang.

He stressed the importance of addressing both the symptoms and root causes of violence and conflict.

In conflict situations, the risks of violence, displacement, poverty and famine often rise exponentially among women. There is a need to be tough on violence against women. Yet nothing can provide more basic protection for women than a holistic approach to conflict prevention and resolution, he said.

Peace and stability can only be restored through dialogue and consultation between parties concerned. Civil society can play a constructive role by advocating a culture of peace. As an important force for peace, women should be given equal opportunities to participate in peace negotiations. All parties should remove undue hindrances and practice gender equality in political processes, he said.

The Security Council bears the primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. It must work harder to eliminate the root causes of conflict, pursue political solutions to hot-spot issues, and unremittingly seek the peaceful settlement of disputes through dialogue, mediation and consultation, so that all women and girls can enjoy peace and live in tranquility, said Zhang.

He also stressed the need to unswervingly support women's empowerment and development.

Security Council Resolution 1325, as a milestone on women, peace and security, redefines the nexus between women and peace. Supporting women's empowerment and development and amplifying women's initiative, participation and power to change in the field of peace and security can help ensure the steady and far-reaching impact of the women, peace and security agenda, he said.

"We should strive to fill the development gap faced by women in conflict areas, prioritize development in UN's work, and seek early harvest in women-related goals of the 2030 Agenda," said Zhang. "We should effectively protect women's economic and social rights, and guarantee their right to education, because knowledge can change life. We should help more women get employed, emerge from poverty, achieve economic autonomy, thereby creating conditions conducive to their effective participation in peace processes."

As the host country of the Fourth World Conference on Women, China always advocates gender equality and women's empowerment, promotes women's development globally, and follows the women, peace and security agenda with concrete actions, said Zhang.

Over the past three decades, more than 1,000 Chinese women have served in UN peacekeeping operations, making important contributions toward peace. In recent years, China has actively worked with other countries, especially developing ones. China helped developing countries implement 100 maternal and child health projects and train 130,000 female professionals, lending strong support to women's empowerment in these countries. China also partnered with the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in setting up a prize for girls' and women's education to galvanize action for this worthy cause, he said.

The Global Development Initiative put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping aims to advance the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and global development, which will lend strong impetus to equal rights for women and the global cause of women's development, he said.

"As is often said in China, women hold up half the sky. We are ready to work with the international community to promote women's empowerment and development, support women's role of holding up half the sky in international peace and security, and build a peaceful and beautiful future together," said Zhang.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)

India’s Congress Party Pins Revival on Women in Major State Poll

Upmanyu Trivedi, Bloomberg News

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, general secretary of the Congress party, holds up a copy of the Congress manifesto at an event marking the document's launch at the party's headquarters in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday, April 2, 2019. India’s main opposition Congress party has pledged to tackle unemployment and poverty as it seeks to wrest power from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling coalition just days out from a national election. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- An actress jailed for protesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial citizenship law, the mother of a rape survivor, and a beauty pageant winner. These are the women leading India’s once-dominant Congress party as it seeks to reinvent itself in a hotly contested state election.

The slew of female candidates in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh is part of a new campaign led by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a scion of India’s once-powerful Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. With a catchy slogan “I’m a girl and I can fight” in Hindi, the campaign underscores the growing importance of women voters in the world’s largest democracy.  

Vadra has pledged 40% of Congress party’s candidates for the 403-seat state assembly will be women. She has met that promise in the first list of candidates her party announced for the state polls that will be carried out in seven phases starting from Feb. 10. The election results will be released March 10.

“If you have suffered in the past, you have to fight and grab power to fight for your rights,” Vadra said in a video posted on Twitter last week. Congress party’s list of candidates is a new kind of politics, she added. 

India is no stranger to powerful female politicians. Vadra’s grandmother and former prime minister, Indira Gandhi, towered over India’s politics for decades, while West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati have wielded considerable power. 

While political parties have courted female voters, it hasn’t translated to greater numbers of women lawmakers. India was ranked 147th of 193 nations last year on the percentage of women in its powerful lower house, according to data released by Inter-Parliamentary Union. 

During the 2017 polls in Uttar Pradesh, when the BJP’s Hindu hard line leader Yogi Adityanath swept his party to victory, less than a tenth of the candidates fielded across party lines were women. They saw little success with only 39 clinching seats then, according to a tracker by Ashoka University.

With about half as many people as the European Union, Uttar Pradesh is seen as a major indicator of national mood ahead of the next general election in 2024. Congress party won just seven seats in the last state polls as it has struggled to gain traction since the BJP come to power in 2014.

Fighting Girls 

The women fielded by Congress party are diverse. Sadaf Jafar, the actress who was jailed for her role in demonstrations against a religion-based citizenship law is now a Congress spokeswoman. Another candidate Poonam Pandey, led a protest for wages by women frontline workers who are helping India to achieve its vaccination targets. 

The rape survivor’s mother has promised to work for the poor in her district if she is elected. Her daughter’s rapist, a former powerful legislator, has been found guilty for sexual assault as well as murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

For Vadra, who in 2019 formally joined the Congress party that her family has controlled for most part since India’s independence in 1947, the gambit is crucial. Her party has seen its star decline in Uttar Pradesh over the last two decades. 

It remains to be seen if the BJP and its rival for power in the state, the Samajwadi Party, see this as a serious challenge. So far the BJP fielded 10 women out of a 107 candidates while Samajwadi Party is putting forward one female candidate from its alliance with a regional party.

“When one party promises, other parties try to match it,” said Sudha Pai, a professor at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. While fielding more women might help Congress party gain some seats, India’s tilt toward Hindu nationalism and protests by the farmers who forced Modi to reverse new agriculture laws may overshadow the effort, she added.

“It doesn’t take away the fact that the Congress party hardly has an organizational structure and workers on the ground,” she said. “So how far it will help in reviving the party is very questionable.”

YEMEN IS THEIR HOME

Biden says administration mulling re-designating Yemen's Houthis as terrorist group

Biden's comment reflected the lack of progress toward ending the war since he launched an initiative shortly after taking office a year ago to bolster UN efforts to restart peace talks.

By REUTERS
Published: JANUARY 20, 2022 

Houthi supporters shout slogans during a rally against the United States' designation of Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, in Sanaa, Yemen January 25, 2021
(photo credit: REUTERS/KHALED ABDULLAH)


US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said his administration is considering re-designating Yemen's Houthi movement as an international terrorist organization following drone and missile attacks on the United Arab Emirates claimed by the group.

His comment at a news conference came shortly after the Emirati Embassy tweeted that UAE Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba urged the Biden administration to restore the designation in response to Monday's strikes on Abu Dhabi airport and a fuel depot.

Asked if he supported returning the Iran-aligned Houthis to the US list of foreign terrorist organizations, from which they were removed nearly a year ago, Biden replied, "The answer is, it's under consideration."

But he conceded that "it's going to be very difficult" to end the conflict pitting the Houthis against Yemen's internationally recognized PUPPET government and a Saudi-led military coalition to which the UAE belongs.

Biden's comment reflected the lack of progress toward ending the war since he launched an initiative shortly after taking office a year ago to bolster U.N. efforts to restart peace talks and end what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian disaster.

The UAE welcomed Biden’s comment, the Emirati Embassy said in a tweet. The “case is clear – launching ballistic and cruise missiles against civilian targets, sustaining aggression, diverting aid to Yemeni people,” it said in the tweet.

As part of the initiative he launched last year, Biden named veteran U.S. diplomat Timothy Lenderking as a special envoy. The State Department also reversed a last-minute Trump administration decision placing the Houthis on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist groups, subjecting them to financial sanctions.

Three people died in Monday's drone and missile attack claimed by the Houthis.

In response, the Saudi-led coalition on Tuesday staged airstrikes on the Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, killing at least 20 people including civilians, according to Houthi media and residents - one of its deadliest attacks since 2019.

Otaiba held "broad" consultations with Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on the situation that included discussions of the Houthi attack, a National Security Council spokesperson said.

The Emirati Embassy tweeted that Otaiba was accompanied by the top UAE intelligence official, Ali al Shamsi.

The embassy, in a second tweet responding to Biden's consideration of the terrorist designation, said that Otaiba pressed the case for re-designating the Houthis in his meeting with Sullivan.

Lenderking began a new mission to the Gulf on Wednesday in a bid to reinvigorate the peace process and tamp down the surge in violence, the State Department said in a statement.

The envoy "will press the parties to de-escalate militarily and seize the new year to participate fully in an inclusive U.N.-led peace process," it said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday spoke with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Pentagon said.

"Austin conveyed his condolences for the loss of life, and underscored his unwavering support for the security and defense of UAE territory against all threats," the Pentagon added.