How Russia’s War Has Hit Ukraine’s Roma People

The Russian invasion has brought fresh hardships for the hundreds of thousands of Romani people in Ukraine, who not only face violence from the invading army but even from the states welcoming refugees.

A woman plays with her child in a sports hall of a high school, transformed into temporary accommodation for people fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Przemysl, Poland, March 9, 2022. REUTERS/Yara Nardi

Sean Benstead

On March 22, a Czech-based Roma human rights organisation confirmed reports of several Romani individuals from Lviv being tied to lampposts and publicly humiliated. This was orchestrated by a local vigilante group called “the Hunters” that prides itself on persecuting Roma who are accused of pickpocketing and stealing. Such vigilantism might be brushed aside by some as an unfortunate consequence of a social order harshened in wartime. Yet the civil and state violence inflicted upon Roma communities that lack legal access to work and services is nothing new – and certainly not unique to Ukraine.

Last year, following the murder of Romani man Stanislav Tomáš by Czech police, I explored the poverty of projects for progressive Romani nation building in the context of extreme deprivation and a concerted aggressive siege from violent state and civil forces. This, I argued, was a historically heroic endeavour – but currently a misplacement of priorities and the energy of social movements. Indeed, Romanestan – the name of a proposed Romani nation – remains in a state of emergency. A year later, nowhere exemplifies this state of emergency more than the situation of Ukraine’s Roma population.

Today Ukrainian Roma find themselves between the massive invading forces of an irredentist and criminal Russian state and comparably smaller and outgunned, but nevertheless armed and battle-hardened, fascist militias. Yet to fully appreciate their place in this emergency, we must also look beyond the war itself.

The conditions of Roma in Ukraine

The 2001 Ukrainian census notes that there are just short of 50,000 people who self-identify as Roma in Ukraine. However, this number is disputed by advocacy organisations, which suggest the number is as high as f400,000, with the largest communities in the regions of Crimea, Odesa, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk. There are three main reasons why official figures are inaccurate, of which we will focus on the first two: 1) Roma people’s reluctance to declare their ethnic origin due to fear of persecution or discrimination; 2) Many Roma individuals in Ukraine do not have identity documents and are not registered as Ukrainian citizens, and are thus stateless; 3) Their incorrect registration by authorities as “Romanians.”

Also read: Putin’s Decision to Shoot for Gold Could Move Global Energy Trade Away From the Dollar

The first reason is a well-founded fear. Ukraine, like much of Europe, has a dark history regarding the treatment of the Romani population. A detailed report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) high commissioner of national minorities confirmed that Ukraine was at the top of the list, alongside other Central and Eastern European states, when it came to rampant skinhead violence against Roma. The study was published in 2000, fourteen years prior to what Vladimir Putin called a putsch by “a gang of drug dealers and neo-Nazis.”

As recently as 2018, to commemorate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, a fascist paramilitary organisation called C14 launched a violent assault on a temporary Romani encampment in Kiev and then went on to stab 17 people from a local Roma encampment in Lviv. More pogroms were reported in 2019 – the year of Volodymyr Zelensky’s election as president – and again in 2020. In response to these brutal attacks, the police response ranged from sporadic and slow arrests to pure indifference. No one has ever been prosecuted. In response to an attack, one Odesa judge ruled that the act of ethnic cleansing in Loshchynivka was “an act of direct democracy.”

These are not historically isolated incidents in Ukraine or the wider region. The history of persecution by Nazi-collaborationist states during World War II, alongside the Stalinist denial of cultural pluralism, is well documented.

Fascist militias are today emboldened and armed with professional military equipment — partly as a result of the 2014 collapse of the Ukrainian state, which in turn desperately clamored for volunteer fighters. And it seems that these incidents are only going to escalate in intensity and barbarity.

The second reason – Roma people’s lack of documents – can be seen as a further symptom of abandonment and the incompetence of state authorities. It is also an effect of discrimination and persecution from both the state and civil society. The scale of statelessness remains unknown even to Ukraine, but the consequences are highly visible. Without legal access to basic services such as health care, education, and formal, legally contracted work, the Roma population finds itself in Dickensian shantytowns and temporary settlements.

Ukrainian Roma are effectively being reproduced as a surplus population, superfluous to the needs of capital or the state, mirroring the condition of Roma across Europe. Given the Zelensky government’s commitment to large-scale privatisation through the State Property Fund – a process affecting even basic utilities – the economic future of the most marginalised didn’t look promising even before the war, with new barriers to accessing even the basic means of everyday existence.

Romani responses to the invasion

In these conditions, Ukrainian Roma communities, like their counterparts across Europe, would have every reason to feel reluctant to rush to the defense of Ukraine’s liberal democratic state. Despite this, Roma in Ukraine are willingly volunteering to join Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, professional military, and international legions. Meanwhile, those who are not engaged in direct combat are engaged in acts of resistance to the invasion that range from capturing Russian tanks, as reported during intense resistance in Kherson Oblast, to building barricades.

Internationally, almost 200 pro-Roma human rights and Romani organisations have condemned the Russian Federation’s war on Ukraine and called on it to end its violent attacks. Their joint statement also calls on the relevant authorities to ensure the human rights of all groups fleeing the war zone are upheld, noting the extreme vulnerability of Roma refugees. In today’s circumstances, Roma families can often be torn from their social networks only to find themselves welcomed by other hostile states on Ukraine’s borders run by right-wing populists.

Also read: By Choosing Not to Condemn Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, India Defies Its Own Belief in Democracy

Despite Putin’s bogus claims of a fascist junta in Kiev, the liberal democratic state – however incompetent and corrupted by institutional prejudice – retains semi-responsive democratic institutions, and at least the promise of a return to a less authoritarian order once peace has returned. To Ukrainian Roma, this is worth defending with their lives. Within the scope of the Ukrainian liberal democratic state, however damaged and dysfunctional, it is still possible to build social movements, benefit from the counsel of human rights organisations, and gain concessions from political and civil institutions.

Given what we have established above, regarding the economic and legal condition of Ukrainian Roma, any talk of human rights and liberal democracy may easily be charged with hypocrisy. And rightly so. Yet the husk of a liberal democratic state still carries a kernel of liberatory potential, however constrained it may be by inequality and institutional prejudice. The point of movements for social justice is to realise the formal rights-based framework of liberal freedom through giving it content. And Romani social and liberation movements have started to make gains in this regard.

Following its election in 2019, Zelensky’s government set up a special authority to identify and meet the needs of national minorities and Romani communities in Ukraine. Further, a national Romani strategy was approved to ensure inclusion measures were followed through on. It is true that, even without a war, these policies would have likely proven fruitless given the scale of the problem, combined with the incompetence and entrenched prejudice among many state authorities.

From the few human rights organisations that operate in the Russian Federation, it is unclear as to the scale and condition of the one million Russian Roma, and only scant information about pogroms in rural areas have come to light. What is clear, though, is that they are cut off from the lifelines of international organising, international networks of solidarity, and responsive democratic institutions.

Meanwhile, many Ukrainian Roma flee to Ukraine’s western borders and, subsequently, into the European Union. While the EU Commission is engaged in ongoing work to tackle issues related to statelessness among member states, many Ukrainian Roma who do not hold valid biometric passports have been turned away from transport to EU states. Despite the blatant breach of Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this has left many stranded in segregated temporary encampments in border towns and villages’ public sports halls. These encampments for the stateless, many of which are in Moldova (not an EU member state), lack food and sanitary facilities. Illness is endemic.

On March 4, the EU activated the Temporary Protection Directive, allowing those fleeing the war to be granted temporary protection in the EU. This should mean that refugees will be given a residence permit, and they will have access to education and to the labor market. At present, this seems to have not been equally applied to a huge number of Roma refugees on the ground.

Those who do make it to EU member states are unlikely to find respite and complete safety. In fact, refugees who have fled to the Czech Republic, the home of murdered Stanislav Tomáš, have found themselves fleeing again due to assaults by locals. That country is just one example among the many EU member states, highlighted by the aforementioned OSCE report, that is marked by harsh anti-Roma racism in addition to social and economic hardship among its Romani population. Here the latent contradictions of liberal democratic freedom again rears its ugly head.

However, amid those contradictions and within that narrow space for agency, we still see a rich architecture of a plurality of Roma civil rights movements that claim varying mixtures of victories and setbacks. Many of these groups have rallied and organised to appeal for humanitarian aid for Ukrainian Roma.

After the guns fall silent

Questions must be raised about what will happen to Ukrainian Roma after this barbaric war.

In the scenario of a less-than-impossible Ukrainian victory, Will the Ukrainian state come to redeem all those Roma lives lost fighting the invader by cleansing its judiciary and police of prejudiced forces? Will the government commit to resolving the endemic statelessness of Roma communities and rebuild a democratic state that is responsive to the needs of the most marginalised?

In the scenario of a victory for Putin’s war machine, will Europe acknowledge the plight of Ukrainian Roma and their heroic defense of an abstract liberal democracy that has never been realised for them? Will European states welcome the stateless as refugees and offer asylum with fully realised, material human rights alongside enforced legal protections?

Given the long history of large-scale violence against the Romani people and their social exclusion, I am doubtful. But large and dramatic societal changes rarely follow smooth historical trajectories and, as one wise man once remarked, decades can happen in a matter of weeks.

Sean Benstead is an activist and writer based in Greater Manchester.

This article was first published on Jacobin.

Kuwait City and its Fragments

by Nazanin Shahrokni and Spyros A. Sofos
April 5th, 2022

A market worker walking in front of a wall full of graffiti in Kuwait City. Source: Francisco Anzola

Originally a small fishing and pearl diving settlement, Kuwait City became a key point in the East India Company sea routes to India and the east coast of Africa in the 18th century. The affluence brought about by the discovery of oil in the 20th century set in motion a dramatic transformation of the Persian Gulf emirate and Kuwait City whose population rose from 62,627 in 1950 to a staggering 3,115,000 in 2021. Kuwait’s gas and oil extraction industry and the service economy that emerged, relied on the import of foreign workers whose number increased dramatically over the years from nearly 31 percent of the population in 1957, to 70 percent in 2022. In response to a demographic shift of such magnitude, Kuwait’s ruling family had to reimagine and rebuild Kuwait City. Central in the redevelopment was the vision of a modern administrative and commercial centre whose periphery expanded rapidly towards the desert surrounding it. In this periphery, new residential suburbs housed the inhabitants who were granted citizenship. Yet, the vision of a modern Kuwait City had little space for those indigenous and migrant populations whose presence and labour were crucial to the materialisation of a new Kuwait City.

Differential inclusion and exclusion processes have fragmented Kuwait City’s population and shape how these fragments inhabit, relate to and experience it. This coupling of fragmentation and inequality has created a dysfunctional urban space, lacking usable public spaces or adequate public transport, marred by high levels of motorisation and environmental degradation. The more attention one turns to the city’s fragments, the more extended the capacity for building a polyphonic city that is not only more inclusive but also efficient.

Kuwait City’s Social Ecology

According to the latest estimates, just under 1.3 million of the emirate’s population are Kuwaitis, 1.2 million are citizens of other Arab countries, approximately 1.5 million are Asian expatriates, 70,000 come from Africa and close to 40,000 from Europe, North and South America and Australia. Yet, this diversity is but one facet of a much more complex urban ecology marked by inequality and segregation.

Tensions between sedentary and nomadic populations is apparent in the form of a hierarchical distinction between the hadar – settled Sunni urban elite – and the badu – Bedouin tribes that used to live a nomadic life in the badiya (desert) surrounding the citadel. The procedure for acquiring citizenship after independence meant that the badu were granted a ‘lesser’ citizenship: apart from the differential political rights that separated them from the hadar, unlike the latter who were relocated to the al-manãtiq al-numüdhajiyya (fifteen model ‘inner’ residential suburbs inside the four ring roads), the badu were not offered housing until the early 1980s when they were moved to modest-sized housing in outlying areas (al-manãtiq al-khãrijiyya) effectively lacking access to the city centre, its administrative services and amenities.

Another significant divide is the one between citizens and the bidun (without [citizenship]). Originating largely in itinerant groups whose lives were divided inside and outside Kuwait’s historical borders that failed to register or meet the exclusive citizenship criteria, the bidun became effective ‘outsiders’ excluded from the benefits of citizenship, not allowed to own property, denied access to free education, relying on precarious, low status jobs, or in the best case joining the low ranks of the military, police or civil service. Social outcasts, they became spatially externalised, banished to settlements in the outskirts of Kuwait City such as Tayma, Sulaibiyya and Ahmadi. These sha’biyya (popular housing), housing most of Kuwait’s 100,000 bidun, have recently become the locus of protests over their exclusion from rights enjoyed by citizens such as free healthcare and education.

The sharpest divide, though, separates citizens and expatriates – mostly lower paid workers in the oil industry, construction, services and domestic sectors. Out of the 1.77 million legally resident expatriates, over 50 percent, roughly 845,000, are illiterate or have basic education. However, statistics point to an asymmetrical distribution between this large segment of Kuwait’s population taking the most menial and vulnerable jobs and a small, highly educated migrant workforce hailing from developed countries and occupying desirable, high-earning positions in healthcare, business and finance.

Consecutive governments, disregarding Kuwait’s dependence on the contribution of migrant labour, represent them as a demographic threat and vow to reduce their numbers. Unskilled migrant workers’ lives have been subjected to restrictions that limit even their basic freedoms. They have been expendable and replaceable, and vilified in the Kuwaiti media on account of their lack of education, ‘their limited health culture,’ and, ironically, their ‘lack of direct contact with mainstream Kuwaiti society’– which is largely the product of design on the part of the authorities.

The kafala (sponsorship) system requires migrants to have a Kuwaiti sponsor (kafeel). In a highly regulated labour market, kafala empowers employers disproportionately and shields them from responsibility in cases of withholding pay, forced labour or abuse as they have the right to petition the immigration authorities to cancel workers’ legal residency, effectively giving them power over the immigration status of those they sponsor. This vulnerability, combined with their precarious presence in Kuwait, strengthens representations of foreign workers as not only outsiders but also inferior. This inferiority is reflected in and further consolidates spatial segregation policies and practices, which are gendered in character: many male workers live in temporary housing near project sites or in higher density residential areas and in the suburbs of Ḥawallī and Al-Sālimiyyah, in cramped rented housing. They are often targeted by government operations such as the 2019 ‘Be Assured’ campaign aimed to remove unmarried or unaccompanied male migrants – so-called ‘bachelors’ – from urban residential areas that left many homeless. Female domestic workers, on the other hand, live with Kuwaiti families in residential neighbourhoods not always served by bus networks as the preference for private transport among Kuwaitis has influenced public transport planning. Their mobility is thus hampered by the cost of taxis given their low income or depends on their employers as the relative lack of leisure and retail infrastructures in residential areas necessitates longer trips.

Despite a tradition of women’s activism, women are often seen as ‘out of place’ in streets, parks, malls and public transport – and are a target of harassment as grassroots initiatives such as the Lan Asket (I will not be silent) Instagram campaign seem to confirm. Patriarchal notions of ‘honour’ curtail women’s freedom of movement and the gendered character of the public/private divide make large swathes of Kuwait City unsafe for them, resulting in gendered geographies of fear. Furthermore, female migrant workers, especially those employed in domestic settings, often experience physical abuse.

The pacifying effects of the state’s welfare provision and the sense of privilege afforded to the citizens, thus, rests on a second distinction between ‘deserving’ insiders and ‘undeserving’ outsiders – bidun and foreign resident labourers while gender, along other social markers of difference, intersects and leaves its own imprint on experiencing the city.

Urban Citizenship: A Bottom-Up Approach

A productive way of looking at the current divides and dysfunctionalities of life in Kuwait is to focus on the city and life in it, especially as the latter is the locus where inequalities have been inscribed in tangible, material ways. Alongside the multiple dividing lines running through Kuwait City, the rapid urbanisation has resulted in the breakdown of traditional forms of solidarity and organisation based on neighbourhoods (firjãn) and tribal kinship structures. This fragmentation and atomisation of city dwellers empowered the state and allowed it to shape the city according to the modernising vision of the ruling elite.

Yet, those populating the urban space rewrite the scripts of living in it in ways that subvert dominant visions and assert different, often splintered visualisations of the right to the city, and acts of ‘(re)assembling’ and reconnecting the urban, of creating their own spatial stories. They reconfigure and claim the city through spatial practices from below, engaging in place-making processes by making communal gardens in disused plots of lands, setting up alternative and inclusive diwanniyat at the seaside – shared spaces where the slow experience of working, living and playing with others unfolds (Amin and Thrift, 2007, p. 137). Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion in Kuwait City seeks to draw inspiration from such instances/micro-contexts of rewriting the city from below and building a sense of urban citizenship, of starting to think creatively about how this way of ‘planning through community’, to paraphrase Rose (1996), can result in sustainable public spaces and inclusive urban design.



About the author

Nazanin Shahrokni
Nazanin Shahrokni is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at LSE where she is programme director of the MSc Gender and Gender Research. She is PI of the LSE Kuwait Programme 'Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Urban Citizenship in Kuwait City' project. Nazanin is author of the award-winning book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press, 2020) and a member of the International Sociological Association Executive Board. Her research focuses on the study of feminist geographies, feminist theories of the state, urban governance, gender segregation and gendered mobility. She tweets at @ShahrokniN

Spyros Sofos
Spyros Sofos is based at the LSE Middle East Centre and is Research Officer at the LSE Kuwait Programme 'Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Urban Citizenship in Kuwait City' project. His latest book is Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) while his research focuses on populism, collective action, polarisation and conflict, and urban politics with particular emphasis on Turkey and the MENA region. He is lead editor of openDemocracy’s #rethinkingpopulism project and leads the Lebanon element of the Swedish Institute 'Co-design for Sustainable, Resilient and Inclusive Urban Spaces' project. He tweets at @spyrosasofos

COULD THE LEFT TAKE POWER IN COLOMBIA?

With the South American country closer than ever to electing a leftwing government, Nick MacWilliam explores what it could mean for peace and human rights.

Gustavo Petro with family members in 2015. 

Credit: Prensa de Bogotá, under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license

ANALYSIS
29 March 2022

As Colombia gears up for its presidential poll in May, the results of recent elections have shown that the Left has reorganized into a powerful electoral force banging at the door of national governance.

Whether that door can be pushed open or not will become clear when Colombians head to the polls on 29 May, with the opportunity to make history. The frontrunner for the top job is progressive senator and former mayor of Bogotá Gustavo Petro, who is running on a platform of public health, public education, environmental protection and the promotion of human rights and peace. These policies represent an antithesis to the current hard-right government of Iván Duque. If elected, Petro would become Colombia’s first leftist president.

Things are looking promising for Petro. His Historic Pact coalition held its election primaries on 13 March with almost six million votes cast – 80 per cent of them for Petro himself. Formed of leftwing and social democratic parties, the Historic Pact has unified diverse political strands and draws its base from sections of the electorate long marginalized from political influence, such as the working class, ethnic minorities, young people and rural communities.

If elected, Petro would become Colombia’s first leftist president

The primaries saw a huge vote for Francia Márquez, a renowned feminist and environmental activist. In what was her first electoral outing she came second to Petro and her vote far exceeded many long-established political figures running in other coalitions. Petro then picked her as his running mate, which means Márquez could well become the first black and female vice president of Colombia.

Márquez’s opposition to resource extraction and deforestation in her home region of Cauca elevated her to national consciousness and saw her awarded the prestigious Goldman Prize in 2018. Colombia is the world’s deadliest country for environmental activists – 65 were killed in 2020 alone – and Márquez has faced threats and attacks. Yet, she refused to back down. Her resolute defence of human rights and natural resources has earned her many admirers.

The Historic Pact also made major gains in congressional elections held the same day, winning the most votes at a national level for both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Although this was an unprecedented achievement for the Left, it did not translate into a left majority in either House.

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

For any hope of a progressive agenda coming out of the presidential election, the Historic Pact will need to build alliances with traditional parties. This could prove tricky given establishment antipathy towards the Left, but it is not insurmountable; the Liberal Party exceeded expectations in its congressional vote and Petro has appealed to it in his bid for a broad alliance.

However, there will be a strong challenge from the Right. Petro’s principal rival is the former mayor of Medellín, Federico Gutiérrez, who received over two million votes in the primaries for the rightwing coalition, Team Colombia. ‘Fico’, as he is known, will enjoy the backing of business elites, much of the press and a large number of middle- and upper-class voters. President Duque’s party, the Democratic Centre, saw its electoral performance tank in the congressional elections, causing its candidate to withdraw and officially endorse Gutiérrez.

The new congressional term also saw the belated enactment of the Special Districts for Peace, 16 congressional seats created for representatives of regions badly impacted by conflict and state abandonment. Though created in the 2016 peace agreement, the seats’ activation had been impeded by Democratic Centre opposition. Unfortunately, a blighted electoral process left these municipalities open to coercion and some of those elected have links to traditional parties or paramilitary networks. Indeed, one of them, Jorge Rodrigo Tovar, is the son of notorious paramilitary commander ‘Jorge 40’ and will now represent the very victims of his father.

PEACE IN CRISIS

Duque’s election victory in 2018 was greeted with dismay on the Colombian Left. ‘The extreme Right is responsible for the very serious problems facing the country in terms of social inequality, of corruption, of human rights violations,’ warned Luis Pedraza, the head of Colombia’s largest trade union confederation, the CUT. As an acolyte of former president Álvaro Uribe, whose 2002-10 government was characterized by state atrocities, scandals and neoliberal consolidation, Duque had campaigned against the 2016 peace agreement between the then-Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas. Many feared for the peace agreement’s future given the new government’s open antipathy towards it.

Those concerns were well-founded: Duque’s four-year presidency has been disastrous for peace and human rights. His government has presided over an insecurity crisis that has killed over 1,000 activists and 300 former FARC combatants since the peace agreement was signed. A combination of free-market policies and the Covid-19 pandemic has driven millions more Colombians into poverty, which today affects over 42 per cent of the population. In April and May 2021, mass protests over these issues encountered extreme state repression, with security forces killing, sexually assaulting and blinding scores of unarmed protesters – drawing condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union and Amnesty International. Yet neither Duque nor his ministers have faced any repercussions – nor, for that matter, have the police officers behind the abuses.

Perhaps the rightwing realize that the peace process could cause their political dominance to recede

In spite of these challenges, the peace process has endured and today more than 13,500 former FARC combatants have transitioned to civilian life, while the FARC-formed Comunes political party recently began its second guaranteed term in Congress, under the peace agreement’s chapter on political participation. The transitional justice system continues to investigate major human-rights violations committed during the conflict and will soon start issuing sentences. These investigations underpin one theory about the rightwing opposition towards the peace process: that powerful business and political figures want to ensure that their complicity with state-backed atrocities, such as the murder of over 5,000 members of the leftwing Patriotic Union party between 1984 and 2018, never comes to light.

Or perhaps the rightwing realize that the peace process could cause their political dominance to recede. While Colombia was at war, the Right routinely smeared progressive movements, including political parties, trade unions and human rights organizations, as guerrilla sympathisers, or even as guerrillas themselves. This legitimized horrific violence against anyone who advocated for a fairer society and virtually eliminated the electoral Left, as evidenced in the ‘political genocide’ of the Patriotic Union. But the mass movement for peace has countered rightwing militarism and generated democratic space for the articulation of values and ideas that resonate with large sectors of society.

While Colombia’s problems are too deeply rooted to overcome in a single term, the election of the first progressive government in national history would provide a foundation on which to begin the arduous process of genuine national transformation. For a great many people, especially in communities scarred by violence and scarcity, a new approach is sorely needed.

Nick MacWilliam is Trade Union and Programmes Officer at Justice For Colombia.

This article is from the March-April 2022 issue of New Internationalist.

STOLEN TREASURES

Taken during a violent British raid, the Benin bronzes have sat in Western museums and private collections for over a century. Kieron Monks reports on Nigeria’s battle to get them back and what it means for the wider push to return works robbed from Africa.

Swapsies: Nigerian artist Lukas Osarobo-Okoro, photographed outside the British Museum in London. Osarobo-Okoro and the Ahiamwen Guild of Benin have offered to donate new artworks to the institution. 

DYLAN MARTINEZ/ALAMY

REPORT
5 April 2021
Benin

‘We are very happy and excited,’ said Abba Issa Tijani ahead of the ceremony.

The director general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) had arrived in Cambridge with Prince Aghatise Erediauwa, younger brother of the Oba (King) of the Royal Court of Benin, the ancient kingdom in what is now southern Nigeria. Aides buzzed around the pair, attempting to corral herds of TV crews.

The delegation was in town to receive a 400-year-old bronze cockerel that was looted by British soldiers during the violent conquest of the Kingdom of Benin in 1897. Thousands of masterfully-crafted artefacts, some dating to the 13th century, were stolen. These objects, dispersed to museums and private collections across the world, came to be known as the Benin bronzes – although many are made of brass and ivory.

With the handover of the cockerel on 27 October 2021, the University of Cambridge became the first British institution to return a bronze. The following day, the Nigerian delegation travelled north to the University of Aberdeen to receive another – a sculpture depicting the head of an Oba. And a few weeks earlier, an agreement was struck with the German government to transfer ownership of around 1,100 bronzes.

‘The coming years are going to be very busy for us,’ says Tijani as he reels off a list of institutions in Europe and the US that the Nigerian government is at various stages of negotiation with. ‘We are not going to relent.’


DEVASTATING LOSS

Campaigns for the restitution of stolen artefacts are growing around the world, with Ethiopia and the Republic of Benin among the nations to secure returns in 2021. But Nigeria has always been at the vanguard of the movement, and no claim has been harder-fought than for the bronzes.

This is partly because of the shocking violence of the raid of 1897. Dozens of villages were annihilated and Benin’s inhabitants were massacred with high-powered weaponry. An empire that had stood for centuries, and stretched from the Niger Delta to Accra at its height, was crushed and its territory annexed to Britain.

The campaign is also sustained by the great importance of the bronzes to Nigerians, particularly Binis. ‘The idea that they are simply artefacts is in many cases misleading,’ says Palace Chief Charles Edosomwan, spokesperson for the Royal Court, explaining that some were used for private rituals of supplication to the ancestors. Others formed a visual diary of life in the Court, depicting events and characters.

Edosomwan believes the losses, in such brutal and humiliating circumstances, have inflicted lasting damage to the national psyche. ‘You can’t fully recover, you can only compensate,’ he says. ‘A lot of children grew up not knowing their history.’

Enotie Ogbebor, a Bini artist, explains through analogy: ‘If the works of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bach, Shakespeare, Picasso, and Monet...were taken from Europe,’ he asks. ‘Do you think European civilization would be where it is today?’

RIGHTFUL RETURNS

Nigeria has been seeking the return of its heritage since before independence in 1960, with limited success.

Several factors have contributed to the recent breakthroughs, including greater awareness and activism about stolen artefacts. The worldwide Black Lives Matter movement has drawn connections between the crimes of colonialism and racial injustice today. Tijani also credits the determination of the University of Cambridge students who campaigned to return the cockerel.

A flurry of new books has also laid bare the brutality of the raid on Benin and the negligent treatment of its spoils. In The Brutish Museums, author Dan Hicks finds centuries-old masterpieces used as doorstops in forgotten basements, undermining Western museums’ argument that they are the most assiduous guardians.
You can’t fully recover, you can only compensate... A lot of children grew up not knowing their history

The Benin Dialogue Group (BDG) has brought the Nigerian government and Royal Court of Benin together with European museums to discuss plans for restitution since 2007, laying the groundwork for recent breakthroughs. The Group also launched the Digital Benin project, which tracks and catalogues the thousands of works taken in 1897 alongside historic photographs and documentary material.1 This is particularly useful as many museums have not made thorough inventories of their African collections.

Nigeria is also working with civil society groups such as the Art Loss Register to pursue pieces stolen since independence. A bronze from the city of Ife was recovered via the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after the Register exposed a fake letter approving its sale, supposedly signed by Nigerian officials. The letter was typed on Microsoft Word but dated to before the software was available.

Another avenue for the return of valued works is UNESCO’s restitution committee, at which Nigeria recently made its first claim for an Ife head stolen in 1987. The bronze, valued at more than $5.3 million, was acquired by a Belgian trader before being seized by police at a British auction house. The trader has since dropped his demands for the full value of the piece down to about $53,000 but Nigeria is only offering the $265 he paid for it. A resolution is expected shortly.

According to a report commissioned by the French government, more than 90 per cent of ‘the material cultural legacy’ of Sub-Saharan Africa is held outside the continent.2 But while more Western governments and museums are becoming amenable to restitutions, many are still resisting. The British Museum holds the world’s largest collection of around 900 pieces and has long been a focus of Nigerian campaigning. In October 2021, Tijani served director Hartwig Fischer with a formal request for their return, which the British Museum says is being ‘reviewed and addressed’.

National museums in Britain and other European countries often point to laws that forbid them from ‘deaccessioning’ – permanently removing – works in their collections. In 2020, former UK Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, threatened the funding of museums that return or remove controversial objects.3

But there are inconsistencies in how stolen works have been treated. Tijani points to exceptions created for artworks looted by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, and says Nigeria may lobby the British government to change the law. Germany and France have taken steps to override similar statutes, for example in 2020 French senators approved a bill to return 27 colonial-era objects in museum collections to the Republic of Benin and Senegal while Germany is implementing new legislation for the return of the Bronzes.

‘ON OUR TERMS’

Not every artefact has to come home. Tijani emphasizes that Nigeria is primarily seeking recognition of ownership and some can stay in Europe on loan. There can be collaborative exhibitions. The objects have value as ambassadors abroad showcasing the skill of Nigerian artists and the richness of their traditions. ‘But this must be on our terms,’ he says.

Western museums that have expressed concerns that large-scale restitution could decimate their collections need only look to Germany for a chance to see the benefits of such action, believes Barbara Plankensteiner of the Museum of Ethnology in Hamburg, and a co-founder of the BDG.

‘I don’t think it will damage museums,’ she says. ‘Restitution will establish new relationships and partnerships.’
According to a report commissioned by the French government, more than 90 per cent of ‘the material cultural legacy’ of Sub-Saharan Africa is held outside the continent

One possibility is for Western museums to acquire more contemporary Nigerian and African art while letting go of historic pieces. The Ahiamwen Guild of Benin has made an offer to the British Museum of a vast plaque weighing two tons to replace bronzes. Ahiamwen co-founder Lukas Osarobo-Okoro says they wanted to draw attention to the quality of artisanship that still exists in Benin.

‘[The bronzes] are portrayed like dinosaur fossils from some desert, they are not associated with living, breathing people,’ he says. ‘But we never stopped...We can create a new era of artefacts that will have the same impact and amaze people in the same way.’

The British Museum is open to the proposal, says Osarobo-Okoro, and further announcements will follow the resolution of logistics planning.

CELEBRATING BEAUTY

Nigeria has detailed plans for the long-awaited return of the bronzes and to capitalize on this historic moment. The NCMM is developing several new museums, including one in the capital city of Abuja and the Royal Museum in Benin next to the Oba’s palace. Tijani says security is being finalized for travelling exhibitions intended to maximize access, while smartphone apps are being developed to appeal to young audiences.

The project that has attracted most attention is the Edo Museum of West African Art, designed by star architect David Adjaye, under development by the non-profit Legacy Restoration Trust (LRT). This complex will include a museum showcasing art of the region, an archaeology site, storage facilities and event spaces.

‘The idea is to try to attract creative industries, as well as being relevant to local audiences,’ says LRT director Philip Ihenacho.

Ogbebor, a trustee on the LRT board, believes the bronzes can be inspirational: ‘My hope is that they awaken the interest of the people to find out more about their history, to take pride in their history, culture and tradition, and also to be influenced by the sheer beauty of these works to want to emulate it in their professions.’

The impact will register beyond Nigeria. Tijani says he is in regular contact with other countries seeking to reclaim heritage and he hopes returns of bronzes can set a precedent for further returns. Tentative steps at a region-wide approach are underway.

He also hopes this might prompt a wider re-evaluation of relations between former colonies and colonial powers: ‘Before, artefacts were stolen and taken to these countries. Now they are exploiting resources like oil, gas, minerals,’ he says. ‘We should be partners for advanced countries rather than [suffer] this exploitation.’

1 digital-benin.org 

2 Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, ‘The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage…’, November 2018, nin.tl/sarr-savoy

 3 Peter Stubley, ‘Museums risk funding cuts if they remove controversial objects…’, Independent, 27 September 2020, nin.tl/funds-risk

This article is from the March-April 2022 issue of New Internationalist.

Red River crest expected in Manitoba between April 8 and 15

Tuesday, April 5th 2022 - Only localized flooding expected in some places between Emerson and Winnipeg

Flood forecasters say they expect the Red River to begin cresting in Manitoba later this week at a volume that should only result in localized flooding.

The U.S. National Weather Service expects the Red to crest on Wednesday at Pembina, N.D., near the Canada-U.S. border.

Manitoba's hydrologic forecast centre expects the Red to crest between Emerson, Man., and Winnipeg sometime between this Friday and the following Friday, April 15.

The river is expected to spill over its banks at some locations, forecasters said. The peak volume of the spring flood is expected to be somewhere between 45,000 and 57,000 cubic feet per second south of Winnipeg at the Red River Floodway inlet.

That's roughly one third the volume of the Flood of the Century in 1997, when the river peaked at 138,000 cubic feet per second south of the floodway.

 

Some provincial roads closed during the spring flood along the Red River in 2020. This year's flood is expected to be slightly lower in volume. (Thomas Asselin/CBC)

The province says the floodway may be put to use, provided river ice moves off in time.

The Red River in Winnipeg is nonetheless expected to peak somewhere between 17.3 and 18.3 feet above normal winter ice level at James Avenue.

That level straddles the line between a minor and moderate flood in the city. Only 16 low-lying city properties have been identified as potentially being at risk, the City of Winnipeg said last week.

As of Monday evening, the Red in Winnipeg had risen to 15.5 feet James.

No significant flooding is expected this spring along the Assiniboine River, Souris River or Pembina River, the province said.

This story was originally published by CBC News on April 4, 2022.

ICYMI
Lebanon goes bankrupt: Deputy Prime Minister

Lebanon as a State, and its Central Bank, has gone bankrupt, according to Deputy Prime Minister, Saadeh Al-Shami.

April 4, 2022 


Lebanon as a State, and its Central Bank, has gone bankrupt, according to Deputy Prime Minister, Saadeh Al-Shami.

"The State has gone bankrupt as did the Banque du Liban, and the loss has occurred, and we will seek to reduce losses for the people," Al-Shami told the local Al-Jadeed channel.




Prime Minister Najib Mikati: Lebanon heading towards collapse – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]

He said the losses will be distributed among the State, the Banque du Liban, banks and depositors.

"There is no conflict of views about the distribution of losses," he added.

Since late 2019, Lebanon has been grappling with a severe economic crisis, including a massive currency depreciation as well as fuel and medical shortages.

The Lebanese currency has lost 90 per cent of its value, eroding people's ability to access basic goods, including food, water, healthcare, and education, while widespread power outages are common due to fuel shortages.

Al-Shami said the country's situation "cannot be ignored" hence bank withdrawals cannot be open to all people.

"I wish we were in a normal situation," he added.

Cash withdrawals in foreign currency in Lebanon have been strictly limited since 2019, due to the ongoing economic crisis.

Sarajevo marks 30th anniversary of siege with memories still alive

Over 11,500 people killed in Bosnian capital in what is described as longest military siege in modern history

Ahmet Nurduhan and Kemal Zorlak |05.04.2022

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina

The 1992 Bosnian War, which started with Serbian troops' siege of Sarajevo and left over 100,000 people killed, has still its traces alive though decades have passed.

The EU recognized the independence of Slovenia and Croatia on Jan. 15, 1992; however, it required a referendum for the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina, to which it responded positively.

The Bosnian Serbs decided to boycott the referendum in a bid to make it invalid as a result of the lack of participation. Despite all obstacles and difficulties, Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia following the referendum on March 1, 1992.

Shortly after the Balkan country became an independent state, Serbian troops besieged Sarajevo on April 5. The siege started a bloody war that continued for three-and-a-half years and left great tragedies and haunting memories.

The Serbs began targeting areas with a Muslim majority following the referendum; their goal was to declare a new Bosnian Serb region affiliated with Serbia.

The Serbs deployed 13,000 soldiers on the hills surrounding Sarajevo and besieged the city, targeting it with both heavy and light weaponry.

In response, the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina – composed of 70,000 soldiers – was formed in the next 19 months. Nevertheless, the defense forces were not able to break the siege as they did not have enough equipment.

Longest military siege in modern history

Acknowledged as the longest military siege in modern history, the siege of Sarajevo continued for 1,425 days and 11,541 people, including 1,601 children, lost their lives.

The war spread across the country following the siege of Sarajevo, leaving some 100,000 people dead. At least 2 million others were forced to abandon their homes.

The war and bloodshed came to an end on Nov. 21, 1995, when Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian parties reached an agreement in Ohio, the US.

Upon the initiative of US diplomat Richard Hallbrooke, the Dayton peace agreement was signed by Alija Izetbegovic, first president of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then presidents of Serbia and Croatia, Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman, respectively.

Sarajevo was attacked on April 5, 1992, and it remained under siege till Feb. 26, 1996.

Siege map

Fikret Logic, a former employee in Bosnia and Herzegovina's cartography agency, mapped the 44-month siege of Sarajevo.

Logic said he aimed to enlighten future generations on what happened during the siege, and not let them forget about the bloody siege.

He also said that the preparation of the map took around three years and it should be distributed in schools in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

*Writing by Ali Murat Alhas

Inventors and innovations in the era of AI

IGOR SLABYKH
YAROSLAV EFERIN

|APRIL 05, 2022

WORLD BANK BLOG

Image: Syda Productions/Shutterstock

Since the time of cavemen, every technological discovery has been made by a human being: the digging stick, the scraper, the wheel, the car, penicillin. For many years, nobody challenged a worldwide legal approach that only a human being can be an inventor. It was until an American scientist and inventor, Doctor Stephen Thaler created an artificial intelligence (AI) Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience (DABUS) and tried to change the established view. In 2018-2019, Dr. Thaler conducted a fascinating experiment that was eventually only a first step in a long road to understanding if AI can be a creator, innovator, and inventor.

The lack of certainty here may lead to long-lasting consequences for innovation and the economic development of nations. Observers believe that if AI-devised inventions are unable to be patented, there may be less investment in this technology. In this case, AI-generated products should be placed in a public domain. Alternatively, AI works protection may incentivize investment in AI and the use of AI systems. Though, a proliferation of patents covering AI-devised inventions might have a detrimental impact on R&D, leading to a decrease of researchers and, generally, jolting the current intellectual property regime, which relies on the "human inventor" rather than on “AI inventor”.

DABUS, the inventor

This discussion became hot after DABUS, without any human help, created an improved food container that used fractal geometry to change its shape. Dr. Thaler submitted patent applications in several countries naming AI as an inventor. The prosecution of applications went in different directions in different countries.

The patent offices in the UK, EU, and the US rejected granting inventorship to an AI machine, pointing out that an inventor must be a human being, not a machine. Nevertheless, the patent applications went off the road in South Africa and Australia. In June 2021, South Africa became the first country globally to accept the possibility for an AI to be an inventor. Now you may find the following text in the inventor’s name line: “DABUS. The invention was automatically generated by an artificial intelligence”.

The following month, the Federal court of Australia sided with Dr. Thaler and overturned the Australian patent office’s decision to reject granting inventorship to an AI machine. Here is a very testimonial paragraph from the court’s opinion: “…Who is the inventor? And if a human is required, who? The programmer? The owner? The operator? The trainer? The person who provided input data? All of the above? None of the above? In my view, in some cases, it may be none of the above. In some cases, the better analysis … is to say that the system itself is the inventor. That would reflect the reality”.



2D image generated by DABUS
Source: www.copyright.gov

Threat to human-devised inventions?

Indeed, data-driven AI is rapidly becoming ingrained in many facets of society, from voice and facial recognition systems to automatic language translation services to customer service chatbots and virtual assistants. But as with all great inventions, advances in AI also present new concerns and uncertainties to social and economic norms and structures.

Right now, AI is literally challenging the essence of innovation. A standard mechanism of invention starts with research and ends up with patents and benefits. But AI seems to do everything by itself, so it can lessen the incentives for innovations and question the beneficiaries. Clearly, AI identified existential questions about the core tenets of the patent system including ownership, inventorship, and infringement. And the DABUS case aggravated such an issue.

What is to be done?

The degree of depth of this discussion varies in different countries. But the question of what to do next is acute almost everywhere and there is no clear answer. The graph below shows different AI policies that leading economies utilize. The policies are limited to database rights and national AI strategies. One of a few good practices is a series of consultations happening in the UK on how to regulate AI-devised inventions.



Source: based on WIPO

Today countries need to unambiguously state at least what AI can and cannot do. There are four possible scenarios for lawmakers depending on national priorities:
No legal changes. This “Let-it-resolve-by-itself” approach is definitively not optimal, and we are not calling for this, but yet it can help to avoid major shakeouts in the patent system.
Prohibit AI to be an inventor. With this approach, one does not interfere with human R&D, but it can decelerate AI advancements.
Allow AI works and do not protect them. This scenario may facilitate innovation in AI technology and promote its use for the public good. But who will bear responsibility for possible negative consequences of AI inventions then?
Allow and protect AI works. Protecting AI works may boost the sector and promote new AI inventions. Though it may be at the expense of human R&D and devalue human creativity. Should it be protected for a limited period, say, one year? Or should it be allowed only for socially significant sectors, such as education and health?

We look forward to your views on these scenarios and the existential question of whether AI can indeed sway unquestioning only human creativity tenet. Clearly, there is a sense of urgency for developing countries to choose the appropriate scenarios for their national agenda. AI inventions may have a critical impact on national innovation potential and economic growth. If no action, AI may amplify digital divide globally.

THE WORLD REGION

Authors


Igor Slabykh

Lawyer, Director, First Priority Consulting LLC
MORE BLOGS BY IGOR


Yaroslav Eferin

Digital Development Consultant
MORE BLOGS BY YAROSLAV

Green Deal: EP backs updated guidelines for trans-European energy infrastructure

Press Releases PLENARY SESSION
ITRE


Energy infrastructure policy to help achieve climate neutrality goals

Funds should support hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage

Projects should also increase security of supply


The legislation aims to align the deployment of energy infrastructure with the Green Deal objectives © AdobeStock/fotowunsch

Parliament approved on Tuesday new rules for selecting which energy projects can receive EU funding and aligning the existing regulation with the EU’s Green Deal.

The legislation, agreed upon with Council in December 2021, sets criteria and the methodology for choosing energy projects of common interest (PCIs), such as high-voltage transmission lines, pipelines, energy storage facilities and smart grids, which would benefit from fast-track administrative procedures and be eligible to receive EU funds.

Boost hydrogen, phase out natural gas

During negotiations, MEPs supported the inclusion of the funding of projects related to the development of hydrogen infrastructure and carbon capture and storage. Eligible projects should also drive market integration and increase the security of energy supply.

The selected projects will have to help EU countries move away from solid fossil fuels such as coal, lignite, peat and oil shale. MEPs secured funding for projects that repurpose existing natural gas infrastructure for hydrogen transport or storage during a transitional period. Projects of this nature will be eligible to receive EU financial assistance until 31 December 2027.

Ending Cyprus and Malta’s energy isolation

New projects based on natural gas will no longer be eligible for EU funding. However, a temporary derogation will allow Cyprus and Malta to have one hydrogen-ready gas project each, funded with a view of connecting them to the EU network and operating under strict conditions.

Quote

“Today’s tragic reality of war in Europe and the European Union’s dramatically low level of energy security proves that, for years, the EU has made serious mistakes in assessing its needs, including in terms of trans-European energy infrastructure”, said lead MEP Zdzisław Krasnodębski (ECR, PL).

With the new legislation, “we are not only improving the infrastructure planning process, but also pushing for new types of projects of common interest, in line with the climate objectives. The revised TEN-E framework will encourage investments in hydrogen and CO2 networks, as well as offshore grid development”, he added.

Next steps

The text was approved by Parliament with 410 votes to 146, and 72 abstentions. It will now have to be formally adopted by Council before publication in the Official Journal and subsequent entry into force.

Background

In its resolution of 10 July 2020, Parliament called for a revision of the trans-European networks in energy (TEN-E) regulation, which sets out EU guidelines for cross-border energy infrastructure and outlines the process for selecting so-called projects of common interest (PCI). In December 2020, the Commission adopted a proposal to revise the TEN-E regulation.

PCIs are infrastructure projects considered essential for delivering on EU objectives in the energy field, including improved interconnection between national markets, greater competitiveness, security of supply and promotion of renewables.

Darwin notebooks missing for 20 years returned to Cambridge

JILL LAWLESS
Tue, April 5, 2022, 



Britain Darwin's NotebooksIn this photo provided by Cambridge University Library on Tuesday, April 5, 2022, a view of the Tree of Life Sketch in one of naturalist Charles Darwin's notbeooks which have recently been returned after going missing in 2001, in Cambridge, England. Two of naturalist Charles Darwin’s notebooks that were reported stolen from Cambridge University's library have been returned, two decades after they disappeared. (Stuart Roberts/Cambridge University Library via AP)

LONDON (AP) — Two of naturalist Charles Darwin’s notebooks that were reported stolen from Cambridge University's library have been returned, two decades after they disappeared.

The university said Tuesday that the manuscripts were left in the library inside a pink gift bag, along with a note wishing the librarian a Happy Easter.

The notebooks, which include the 19th-century scientist’s famous 1837 “Tree of Life” sketch, went missing in 2001 after being removed for photographing, though at the time staff believed they might have been misplaced. After searches of the library’s collection of 10 million books, maps and manuscripts failed to find them, they were reported stolen to police in October 2020.

Local detectives notified the global police organization Interpol and launched an international hunt for the notebooks, valued at millions of pounds (dollars).

On March 9 the books reappeared, left in a public area of the building, outside the librarian’s office, which is not covered by security cameras. The two notebooks were wrapped in clingfilm inside their archive box, and appeared undamaged. The accompanying note said: “Librarian Happy Easter X.”

Darwin filled the notebooks with ideas shortly after returning from his voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, developing ideas that would bloom into his landmark work on evolution, “On the Origin of Species.”

The university's director of library services Jessica Gardner said her feeling of relief at the books’ reappearance was “profound and almost impossible to adequately express.”

“The notebooks can now retake their rightful place alongside the rest of the Darwin Archive at Cambridge, at the heart of the nation’s cultural and scientific heritage, alongside the archives of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Stephen Hawking,” she said.

The notebooks are set to go on public display from July as part of a Darwin exhibition at the library.

Cambridgeshire Police said its investigation was continuing, “and we are following up some lines of inquiry."

“We also renew our appeal for anyone with information about the case to contact us,” the force said.