Stop the Arms Shipments Now

BY RON JACOBS

 FEBRUARY 15, 2024
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Image by Curioso Photography.

Here’s a story I’ve told before. I’m telling it again because of its continued relevance, especially in this particular moment of war and impending greater war. When I was a ten year old child I lived on a US military base near Peshawar, Pakistan. The purpose of the base was to spy on the Soviet Union, China and whatever other country in the region the Pentagon decided should be spied on. The year was 1965. My birthday, which falls on September 13^th, was the first night the bombs fell. The bombers were planes owned by the Indian Air Force and the bombs were dropped on Pakistani targets a couple miles from the US base. Our family held hands in our house and prayed. Over the next six days we spent our nights in a makeshift bomb shelter dug in our backyard. The bombs fell a couple miles away and anti-aircraft fire lit up the sky. I learned in my later years that the targets were mostly located near the civilian/military airport run by the Pakistanis with US assistance. For the most part, the targets were military in nature. Of course, civilian targets were also hit. This is par for the course in so-called air warfare. Bombs fall where the elements and gravity takes them, no matter how smart their manufacturers claim they are. The armaments being deployed in 1965 were not smart at all. Just ask the Vietnamese or the US pilots that flew B-52 bombers over fields and jungles in Vietnam, carpet bombing the land, waters, livestock and the people living there, killing and poisoning their gardens and rice fields.

Anyhow, the war between India and Pakistan had been heating up since late spring. It was over the disputed and semi-autonomous provinces of Kashmir and Jammu. This region remains a point of conflict between India and Pakistan and had been since the founding of both states in 1947 when the British crown gave up its imperial dominion over India. Northwestern Pakistan, where Peshawar is located, had only recently become part of the Indian aerial incursion. The bombing continued every night for several days. The women and children living on the US base were evacuated on September 19, 1965, seven days after the first night of air raids on my tenth birthday. After an overland trip from Peshawar to Kabul, Afghanistan, we boarded C-130 cargo planes outfitted for personnel transport to Istanbul, Turkey. We were then transported by bus and ferry to another US military base in Karamursel, Turkey. We spent the next three months living in barracks on the base, eating at the mess hall and going to school in temporary quonset huts. It was an adventure for some of us and a trial for others.

Meanwhile, the war continued. So did efforts by Washington and the Soviet Union to end it. Arms deliveries to both sides were cut off. Together with the seesaw nature of the conflict itself, ceasefire talks intensified. A truce was reached by October. The decrease in the flow of weapons and ammunition had created a situation where negotiations made the most sense.

I tell this little story for a simple reason. When the tools of war are depleted or denied, the participants in said conflict have to seek some other means to end it. Total victory for either side becomes an illusion impossible to attain, even in their own dreams. Lives are saved. The political and economic interests that propelled the armies to wage war must seek other means of conflict resolution. In other words, they must sit down and negotiate a ceasefire maybe even a permanent truce. In the conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine, it is well past time for the United States and its subsidiaries to stop deliveries of weapons and ammunition. No participant in either conflict can win militarily, no matter what the arrogant leaders involved think or say. The roots of the conflicts are political, as are the means to resolve them. I repeat, Washington, as the primary arms merchant in both conflicts, must end its shipments immediately. Only then will the political actors involved begin to talk. Only then will the way towards a fair and reasonable peace open up.

I am certain some people will object to this call to stop all arms and ammo shipments to Israel and Ukraine. Indeed, I would be surprised if they didn’t. Some who support an arms embargo on Israel will oppose one on Ukraine. This disagreement with the suggestion mostly proves how our general consciousness is so distorted that war seems not only reasonable, but that it can be stopped by prolonging it. Furthermore, even though these conflicts are different, the essential truth that the continued flow of arms insures their continuation cannot be denied. In Palestine, the people and their resistance groups will have an opportunity to take care of their immediate survival. In Ukraine, where both Moscow and Kyiv have alternately called for negotiations instead of war, a similar scenario would unfold. Maintaining and supporting a military approach places territory and power above human life and, at its most fundamental puts war industry profits above peace. In doing so, the continued dominance of the masters of war is guaranteed. And the unnecessary loss of life goes on.

Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. He has a new book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation coming out in Spring 2024.   He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Why anti-money laundering policies are failing

ELISABETH KRECKÉ

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

In the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing, current methods are costly, ineffective and excessively regulatory. There is hope: new tools are on the way.

In a nutshell

• Current efforts intercept an estimated 0.1 percent of laundered money
• 
  
• Compliance costs for financial institutions topped $274 billion in 2022
• 
  
• A more sophisticated approach will use the latest technologies

Money laundering needs to be combated effectively. Terrorists, illegal arms dealers, traffickers, drug cartels, corrupt politicians, kleptocratic regimes and all sorts of other criminals wash their dirty money through the global financial system, threatening our societies. While difficult to quantify, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that between two and five percent of global gross domestic product, which was $105 trillion in 2023, is laundered each year.

Around the world, governments and supranational organizations have worked hard to put regulations in place that could grapple with the problem. Along with financial institutions, they have built up complex and highly sophisticated frameworks for anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) over the past three decades. Progress has come notably in Europe, where six ambitious directives have been implemented, creating the impression that the situation is largely under control.

But will this panoply of nobly intended laws, regulations, policies, tools and institutions live up to expectations?

When it comes to evaluating the effectiveness of current efforts to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, there are surprisingly few evidence-based studies addressing the subject. One may almost wonder whether this research topic is being implicitly censored because it could be politically controversial. Another reason may be that the existing anti-money laundering systems come off badly in terms of cost-benefit analyses.

The stiflingly high costs of regulation

Tallying up all the costs incurred by the fight against financial crime is a complicated endeavor. Costs can be direct or indirect, tangible or intangible, fixed or variable, one-time or ongoing.

Some scholars have made a distinction between the “AML-complex” and the “compliance industry,” albeit noting that the two are deeply entangled. The global anti-money laundering system is based on the premise that public and private institutions should closely cooperate on both the national and international level. Private partners are supposed to perform the prevention, detection and reporting tasks, while public partners do the analytic and punitive part of the job.

A myriad of actors is involved in the AML-complex, costing taxpayers a lot of money. These funds go to the development and maintenance of an ever-growing number of supervisory agencies, financial intelligence units, interconnected central beneficial ownership registers, intergovernmental policymaking bodies, law enforcement authorities and a host of other big anti-money laundering bureaucracies. And then there are the costs of the intricate regulatory and legislative processes through which AML rules – norms, procedures and technical standards – are agreed upon before being issued and then constantly updated.

Banks hire armies of compliance officers

Having one foot in the AML-complex and one in the compliance industry, private financial institutions are in a tricky spot.

Supposedly, they are well-positioned to see fraudulent schemes before anyone else does. That is why, from the start, they were given such a central role in anti-money laundering. For example, they must maintain complete “Know Your Customer” (KYC) files and systematically report to law enforcement agencies any suspicious person, company or possible network, as well as any questionable activity, transaction or pattern.

To comply with the stringent requirements to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism, banks had to hire armies of compliance officers. They also turned to the fast-growing RegTech (Regulatory Technology) industry, which provides them with the latest solutions to meet their ever more complex regulatory obligations.

Over the years, banks’ compliance costs to combat money laundering have increased dramatically. According to estimates, they have ballooned worldwide to $274.1 billion in 2022, up from $213.9 billion in 2020. Moreover, fines for compliance failures are skyrocketing. Reportedly, they surged 50 percent in 2022, reaching hundreds of millions of dollars for the biggest global companies.

Alarming regulatory overreach

Apparently, in many cases, financial institutions were sanctioned because they improperly implemented identity verification or anti-money laundering customer screening. Severe punishment can be inflicted upon banks even though no actual money laundering occurred under their supervision. Regulators are overreaching to penalize banks in the absence of a crime – and despite having effective in-house KYC procedures in place – simply because these institutions did not meet the regulators’ subjective standards of the ideal AML or CFT program, according to American lawyers Lanier Saperstein, Geoffrey Sant and Michelle Ng. 

The three lawyers further criticized how the criterion for judging a bank’s effectiveness has shifted to the question of how much it had spent on compliance. Regulators simply seem to assume that the more bank money floods into anti-money laundering compliance, the fewer financial crimes will be committed. The same holds for the number of compliance officers: the more, the better. These assertions are completely unfounded

Higher costs for consumers

A full cost analysis would also require considering a range of economic costs created by anti-money laundering policies. To continue with the banking example, one can only agree with Mr. Saperstein, Mr. Sant and Ms. Ng that banks forced to spend substantial parts of their budgets on compliance no longer have this money available for their core business: providing loans and services to their clients. Even though banks pass some of their compliance costs on to customers, regulation could be partly responsible for a loss in competitiveness of a sector that has been struggling with low profitability for over a decade, especially in Europe.

Scared of sanctions, financial institutions tend to close the accounts of clients considered high-risk and to withdraw from business sectors or regions where money laundering poses the greatest threats. Such “de-risking” strategies are part of the reason some of the most vulnerable communities are excluded from the global financial system. These are precisely the populations that, according to the official narrative, the regulations seek to protect.

Another potential source of economic costs are regulation-induced distortions in firms’ investment decisions. Decades of increased opportunity costs for honest investors are nearly impossible to quantify. Yet they may account for substantial losses each year.

Negligible success in disrupting criminal financial flows

When it comes to the benefits, it is worth asking tough questions. For instance, do KYC and anti-money laundering regulations adequately protect consumers, investors and the overall financial system from financial crime? How much do they deter would-be criminals? How much of the illicit flows are recovered thanks to such checks?

A 2018 study by American political scientist Ronald Pol suggested that the overall impact of AML policy intervention on criminal finances is less than 0.1 percent – that is, absolutely negligible.

Mr. Pol’s findings are in line with those of a 2011 research report by the UNODC, according to which “much less than one percent (probably around 0.2 percent)” of the proceeds of crime laundered via the global financial system are seized and frozen.

A 2023 Europol report confirmed what one could have suspected: terrorists, criminals and fraudsters always find ways to circumvent even the most complicated regulatory processes. Among others, they exploit cutting-edge technologies much faster than authorities can keep up.

If criminal enterprises are keeping 99.8 percent or more of their dirty money, it is hard to call the current regulatory systems efficient. Mr. Pol acknowledged that his data and methodology could be subject to criticism. Money laundering is a secretive activity, so accurate information on illicit flows is difficult to obtain and estimations cannot be definitive.

Nevertheless, the gap between policy intent and results is huge. A similar critique also came from Christopher Giancarlo, former chairman of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

The question is: if it turns out that honest banks, businesses and households (that is, taxpayers, consumers and ordinary citizens) are penalized far more than criminal enterprises, what is the point of maintaining such an unsuccessful system? What is the weight of an ideological component in that decision or, rather, the desire of a technocratic elite to push forward a paradigm of transparency?

Disappointment because ‘everyone is doing badly’

Unexpectedly, another top financial regulator recently came to share Mr. Pol’s opinion that AML, in its present form, is “the world’s least effective policy experiment.” During a 2020 interview, David Lewis – the former executive secretary of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the most powerful global AML watchdog – said that despite efforts made by countries under FATF surveillance, “everyone is doing badly.” Seemingly, AML/CFT measures are often poorly implemented on a national level. Mr. Lewis lamented that some nations only want to avoid bad reports that put them on FATF’s list of low-scoring countries.

At a conference held in London in 2021, the ex-regulator reiterated his disgust with governments’ lack of willingness to truly understand and adequately fight the laundering of organized crime money. He went further and stated: “I’m fed up with protecting the integrity of the financial system. The truth is I don’t care about the financial system, so why should I care about the integrity of it.”

Hearing these words from a former head of the agency responsible for setting global AML standards is startling. As Mr. Lewis himself reminds us, the mandate of the FATF is precisely to protect the integrity of the financial system. What could come across as a rather cavalier or provocative attitude is an admission of system failure. “As AML professionals we all need to take more risks and stop just ticking the boxes,” Mr. Lewis demanded.

Scenarios

Very likely: More effective tools

Emerging trends in the anti-money laundering world show that the message has been received.

First, standard country-focused approaches seem to be slowly giving way to an insistence on a comprehensive system. The European Union’s recent decision to create its own Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) goes in that direction. The new institution, whose location is still unclear, will directly supervise certain types of credit and financial institutions. EU-level supervision coming on top of the multitude of already existing layers of national surveillance could signal a welcome paradigm shift. 

Second, the so-called legacy approaches to combatting money laundering are about to be eclipsed by “modern forensic inquiry” approaches.

Legacy approaches are based on step-by-step procedures that financial institutions have to apply, such as identity verification, consumer screening, suspicious activity detection, enhanced due diligence, alerts and suspicious activity reports, among others. Poor communication between groups or departments and lack of flexibility are typical obstacles to efficiency.

Modern approaches aim to break down the barriers to effective information sharing – including the “myths and realities that remain around tipping off and data protection,” as demanded by former FATF boss Mr. Lewis.

Data pooling and collaborative analytics between financial institutions and their supervisors could soon become the norm. Anti-money laundering will be increasingly treated as a data analytics problem.

Already now, revolutionary methods of forensic inquiry offer banks and authorities far-reaching tools to comb through ever-larger data sets and identify patterns and trends more effectively. The idea is not just to produce information, but to gain insight.

Although it is early days for predictive analytics, it looks like this will be a major trend in AML/CFT. To predict what might happen in the future, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques will be used in combination with all kinds of data, including information on historical consumer behaviors, events and relationships. Ideally, the likelihood of fraud and other financial crimes should be detected before they even occur.

As authorities work smarter, the question will remain: will new technologies such as big data analytics, automated pattern recognition and, more generally, predictive intelligence, fix the efficiency problem of the current AML/KYC systems, or will they merely add another layer of problems to existing ones – notably in terms of Orwellian surveillance? More than ever, honest citizens might be those who endure the highest costs, be they financial or democratic.

ARCHAEOLOGY IS LOOTING

‘Our gods were locked in the basement.’ Now Nepal is pursuing sacred items once smuggled abroad

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

February 15, 2024

Masks of Hindu deity Lord Bhairabh dated from 16th century, stolen from Nepal's Dolakha district and brought back from Dallas museum of art and Rubin Museum of art are displayed during a press conference at the Department of Archaeology in Kathmandu, Nepal, Jan. 31, 2024. (AP Photo)

KATHMANDU, Nepal--Nepal’s gods and goddess are returning home.

An unknown number of sacred statues of Hindu deities were stolen and smuggled abroad in the past. Now dozens are being repatriated to the Himalayan nation, part of a growing global effort to return such items to countries in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

Last month, four idols and masks of Hindu gods were returned to Nepal from the United States by museums and a private collector.

Among them was a 16th century statue of Uma-Maheswora, an avatar of the gods Shiva and Parvati, that was stolen four decades ago. It was not clear who took it or how it ended up at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, which handed it over to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Devotees celebrated its return in Patan, south of the capital, Kathmandu. The stone-paved alleys were crowded with devotees offering money and flowers. Men in traditional attire played drums and cymbals and chanted prayers.

“I cannot say how extremely happy I am right now,” said Ram Maya Benjankar, a 52-year-old who said she had cried as a child after learning the statue had been stolen and waited years for its return.

The statue had simply disappeared from their neighborhood, she said.

The majority of Nepal’s 29 million people are Hindu, and every neighborhood has a temple that houses such items. They are rarely guarded, making it easy for thieves.

For Nepalese, the idols have religious significance but no monetary value. For smugglers, however, they can bring huge value abroad. For years, there was little attention given to the thefts or any effort made at recovery.

That has changed in recent years as the government, art lovers and campaigners pursue stolen heritage items. They have been successful in many cases.

A group representing the ethnic Newar community from Nepal in the U.S. heard about the reappearance of the Uma-Maheswora statue at the Brooklyn Museum and took the initiative to bring it home.

“We were very sad to see that our gods were locked in the basement. We were then determined that we need to take back the heritage,” said Bijaya Man Singh, a member of the group that carried the four idols and masks back to Nepal.

Now the temple in Patan is being prepared to reinstate the Uma-Maheswora statue. Following the welcome ceremony, it was placed on a chariot carried by devotees and taken to a museum, where it will be kept under security until its final move.

More than 20 other stolen artifacts are in the pipeline to be repatriated to Nepal in the near future, according to Jayaram Shrestha, director at the National Museum in Kathmandu. Most will return from the United States and Europe.

Shrestha has built a special room to exhibit repatriated items so the public can come and worship if they want. There are currently 62 statues on display.

“As we expect many to come soon, we are expanding the section of the museum,” Shrestha said. “I don’t want to store them in storage. They should be made available.”

It has become easier to locate stolen items as awareness grows among Nepalis at home and abroad. They can now track artifacts online when they are exhibited or put up for auction.

And more collectors and museums now believe they should be taken back to where they belong, Shrestha said.

“The Nepal government has been taking initiative to get them back with recovery campaigns and using diplomatic channels, embassies in foreign countries,” he said.

“We have made it clear that they need to be reinstated to their original place and security ensured to keep these thousands-of-years-old artifacts safe.” said Nepal’s foreign minister, Narayan Prakash Saud.

1.4B children missing out on basic social protection, new data shows

Fewer than one in 10 children in low-income countries have access to child benefits, leaving them vulnerable to disease, education gaps and poverty.



UNICEF

Coverage rates for children in countries highly vulnerable to climate crisis are a third lower than those in countries not classified as being at high risk. / Photo: UNICEF

Worldwide, 1.4 billion children aged under 16 lack any form of social protection, leaving them vulnerable to disease, poor nutrition and poverty, according to data released Wednesday by two UN agencies and the British charity Save the Children.

The data was compiled by the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children.

In low-income countries, fewer than one in 10 children have access to child benefits, highlighting a significant disparity compared to coverage enjoyed by children in high-income countries.

"Globally, there are 333 million children living in extreme poverty, struggling to survive on less than $2.15 per day, and nearly one billion children living in multidimensional poverty," said Natalia Winder Rossi, Global Director of Social Policy and Social Protection at UNICEF.

"At the current rate of progress, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals' poverty targets are out of reach. This is unacceptable," she said.

Rossi said ending child poverty is a policy choice made by governments.

Expanding social protection coverage of children in the fight against poverty is critical, including the progressive realisation of universal child benefits, she said.

The groups said child benefits are a vital social protection intended to promote children's long-term well-being.

Cash or tax credits

They are delivered as cash or tax credits, and child benefits are essential for reducing poverty as well as accessing health care, nutrition, a quality education, water and sanitation.

The benefits also support socio-economic development, particularly in crisis times.

Many children are deprived of the basic resources and services they need to escape poverty and are therefore exposed to the long-lasting impact of hunger, malnutrition and unrealised potential.

The data shows a modest global increase in access to child benefits over 14 years, from 20 percent in 2009 to 28.1 percent in 2023.

However, progress has been unequal. In low-income countries, coverage rates remain staggeringly low, at around 9 percent.

At the same time, 84.6 percent of children in high-income countries are covered.

Coverage rates for children in countries highly vulnerable to climate crisis are a third lower than those in countries not classified as being at high risk.

Ensuring that children are covered by social protection is key to protecting them from the worst impacts of the climate crisis, says the group.

SOURCE: AA

UK

It’s a recession!

BY DAN BLOOM

FEBRUARY 15, 2024 

Good Thursday morning. This is Dan Bloom.

IT’S A RECESSION! GDP fell 0.3 percent in the last three months of 2023, ONS figures released just now show — and we all know what that means. It’s the second shrinkage in a row (having fallen 0.1 percent the previous quarter), meaning the U.K. officially tipped into recession last year.

Man the barricades! It’s the one headline Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (who put “growing the economy” at the heart of his five pledges) really didn’t need. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will be hitting the airwaves to defend the PM’s plan. He’s due to be interviewed this morning by an [insert collective noun here] of economics editors, including the BBC’s Faisal Islam and Sky’s Ed Conway. Expect lots of talk about global headwinds and whatnot.

STUPID ECONOMY: The first recession since the COVID-19 pandemic is an unenviable story for any government to deal with, and the R-word will cut through to the voting public. But it’s also true that this is a recession far milder than the Bank of England once predicted, and that the slightest upward shift in numbers would’ve reversed the news line. Not for nothing did government officials (and, well, Playbook) draft two statements in advance, Boris Johnson-style.

That’s why … Playbook hears some senior officials have read with interest the musings of the FT’s Chris Giles, who is in (to paraphrase) the “let’s ditch this stupid definition of a recession” camp.

The bad news: The alternative word for it is … er … “stagnation.” Which doesn’t sound fab either. The BBC sums up nearly two years of measly growth figures in charts here, and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves should be sticking the boot into the flat-as-pancake-day economy shortly. Spare a thought for Liz Truss.

Cheer up! It does get better. The OECD projects growth will pick up to 0.7 percent this year and 1.2 percent in 2025, which is more than France and Germany though less than Spain, Canada and Australia.

GRID OF SH*T UPDATE: Things could be worse. Tory plotters had warned we might see inflation rise on Wednesday, recession on Thursday and two by-election defeats on Friday. So far it’s only one out of two, and an unexpectedly appalling week for the Labour Party has taken some focus off Sunak. We will, however, find out about the by-elections overnight.

PROPHETS OF GLOOM: It’s all warm-up for the March 6 budget. The i splashes on Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey warning interest rates won’t come back to their pre-Covid rock bottom … while Hunt is looking at paring back public spending rises to just 0.75 percentage points a year after 2025 to pay for tax cuts, as the FT splash reports. Quite the trap for Labour.

SCOOP — SAVE THE DATE: Here’s a decent budget bet. Hunt met industry figures on Wednesday to discuss raising the £20,000 tax-free ISA savings limit, POLITICO’s ace new U.K. finance reporter James Fitzgerald emails to say. After Hunt dropped a massive hint to Bloomberg, officials now tell James the “Great British ISA” — shelved before the Autumn Statement — is firmly back on the table.

 

Delta CEO sends letter to Congress on financial support for employees

100 House members in a separate letter called on him to stay neutral in union talks at the company.

BY TARA SUTER - 02/14/24 - THE HILL

FILE – The logo for Delta Air Lines appears on a screen above a trading post, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, July 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian in a letter to members of Congress on Wednesday discussed steps the company has taken to help its employees, two days after more than 100 House members in a separate letter called on him to stay neutral in union talks at the company.

Bastian highlighted a $1.4 billion profit-sharing arrangement for front-line workers and an emergency savings program, in which participating employees “can earn $1,000 from Delta to fund a rainy day account.”

“At Delta, our No. 1 job is taking care of our people — our success flows from this simple concept. Sharing profits with our people, along with providing tools and education to help manage and grow their wealth, is part of our responsibility as a values-led organization,” Bastian said in the letter.

A group of 145 House members signed a Monday letter calling on Bastian to stay out of union organization talks, saying that their constituents had informed them of “Delta’s history of deploying union-busting tactics, including threatening employees with termination of their benefits, distributing anti-union literature, and hosting an anti-union website.”

“These retaliatory actions are hostile to workers’ rights, and we urge you to commit to implementing a neutrality agreement with regard to these union organizing efforts,” the letter continued. “A neutrality agreement simply consists of an employer agreeing not to engage in pre-election activities that influence workers’ freedom to form a union.”

The letter went on to “strongly urge” Bastian to “adopt a neutrality agreement with regards to any efforts by your employees to unionize and to commit to negotiating in good faith if your employees do choose to form a union.”

The letter came as flight attendants working for some of the country’s largest airlines picketed outside of more than 30 airports in the U.S., U.K. and Guam on Tuesday to “demand fair contracts with significant pay increases,” according to the Association of Flight Attendants union. 

In an emailed statement, Delta said that they “welcome the dialogue with these members of Congress.”

“Delta firmly believes every employee has the right to choose or reject union representation without interference, and we have policies in place that allow employees to learn more about this important decision,” the statement read.

SIPRI launches landmark report in New York

15 February 2024

Audience listening to the panel discussion at the launch event. 

Photo: Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN

On 9 February, SIPRI launched a report that looks at how multilateral peace operations relate to non-traditional security challenges. 

The launch took place against the backdrop of discussions on United Nations initiatives such as the ‘New Agenda for Peace’, ‘Summit of the Future’ and ‘Pact for the Future’.

Click here to read the report.

Fit for purpose

The context in which multilateral peace operations are conducted is increasingly marked by non-traditional security challenges—terrorism and violent extremism, organized crime, irregular migration and human trafficking, environmental degradation and resource scarcity, and epidemics and pandemics. These challenges are often of great relevance to the work of peace operations, but such missions may not be the right tool for addressing them.

The report provides an overview of the activities that multilateral peace operations undertake to address the drivers and consequences of non-traditional security challenges, as well as the benefits and challenges of missions taking on these tasks. As the field of peace operations and conflict management is fragmenting and moving away from the UN, the report outlines the implications for coordination and cooperation between all actors and provides policy implications.

At the event, Dr Jaïr van der Lijn, Director of the SIPRI Peace Operations and Conflict Management Programme, presented the findings of the report to a panel of experts. Ambassador Elina Kalkku, Permanent Representative of Finland to the UN, welcomed the audience with opening remarks and Ambassador Bahia Tahzib-Lie, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the UN, provided closing remarks.

The report concludes the third phase of the New Geopolitics of Peace Operations initiative. The initiative is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and is conducted in partnership with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

About the SIPRI Peace Operations and Conflict Management Programme

Peace operations and conflict management have been core elements of SIPRI’s work since the end of the cold war. Currently, SIPRI’s work within peace operations and conflict management consists of six main pillars: (a) peace operations data and trends; (b) the future of peace operations in the New Geopolitics of Peace Operations initiative; (c) gender and peace operations and conflict management; (d) police and security sector reforms in peace operations; (e) civilian aspects in peace operations; and (f) human rights and peace operations.

Click here to read more about the programme

Related content
Fit For Purpose: Effective Peace Operation Partnerships in an Era of Non-Traditional Security Challenges

Fit For Purpose: Effective Peace Operation Partnerships in an Era of Non-Traditional Security Challenges February 2024

Peace operations and conflict management

Conflict, peace and security

Democrats unveil new hip hop task force to tackle racial inequity

BY CHEYANNE M. DANIELS 

- 02/14/24 

A coalition of Democrats are looking to use the power of music to tackle some of the most pressing issues facing Black and Brown Americans.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday unveiled the Congressional Hip Hop Power and Justice Task Force outside the Capitol.

The taskforce, led by Bowman, will use hip hop’s messaging of building a more equitable society to help spearhead initiatives to address economic equality, affordable housing and racial justice imperatives.

In an exclusive with The Hill, Bowman explained that the inspiration behind the task force came from reflecting on how the genre impacted him over the years.

Artists like Eric B. & Rakim, Queen Latifah, Chuck D and Public Enemy inspired the New York lawmaker throughout his life, he said, including during his time as an educator.

“They were very instrumental in creating a curriculum and blueprint for my life,” Bowman told The Hill. “I owe a lot of who I am to the lessons that they taught me on and through their music.”

Hip hop, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last August, has often been used as a political tool for Black and Brown Americans, and Bowman said he hopes to capitalize on that through the taskforce.

“Hip hop has always been about ending poverty in America, about fully funding our public schools. It’s always been about justice reform and police reform,” the lawmaker said. “It’s always been about affordable housing and dealing with the issue of threats of violence.”

“At this moment in particular when you consider the Black Lives Matter movement to the Ceasefire movement and the fight that continues for freedom, justice and equality — now it’s time to build political power at a level that’s never been done before,” he added.

Some of that is already happening.

In September, artists — including Fat Joe, Rick Ross and Busta Rhymes — partnered with Power to the Patients, to film a public service announcement demanding legislators create a more honest, affordable and equitable healthcare system.

Groups like The Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC), the Recording Academy and the Black Music Collective have also joined forces with Bowman and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) in calling for the passage of the Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP) Act, a bill that would limit the admissibility of an artist’s creative or artistic expression against them in court.

And every year, Hip Hop on The Hill brings artists and legislators together through the Hip Hop Caucus.

“It’s been going on in terms of rappers and artists and industry interfacing with elected officials on a consistent basis, we just want to take that up a notch and make it more consistent, make us more intentional, and use the power of the genre as a multibillion dollar global economy to move lawmakers in terms of helping them to understand what’s happening in our most marginalized communities,” said Bowman.

Part of that, he added, means conducting Hip Hop on the Hill once a month rather than once a year.

“We want artists to constantly be talking to lawmakers about what they’re going through in their communities and what’s happening in their communities so lawmakers can understand that hip hop artists come from the most marginalized, neglected places in our country,” he said.

Some of the most prominent hip hop artists have shared what it was like to grow up in these places.

Eminem, whose full name is Marshall Mathers, grew up in poverty in a trailer park — a story that many Americans relate to, Bowman said, and lawmakers need to hear that reality.

But Bowman also points to how legitimizing hip hop can lead to widespread cultural change. One way, he said, is by addressing misogyny both in the genre and public discourse.

The lawmaker points to the story of Megan Thee Stallion, who faced vitriol and hate after filing assault charges against rapper Tory Lanez after he shot her.

“She persevered, she fought, she told the truth, and she won,” said Bowman. “And that’s what we need to know about.”

Uplifting women in hip hop is a core component of the task force, in part because Black women have been instrumental in the fight for equality and justice, said Bowman.

That’s part of the reason why he unveiled the taskforce on Wednesday — the anniversary of his mother’s death.

Bowman, who grew up in a single mother household, said his mother used to listen and enjoy hip hop with him as he grew up.

“I’m very lucky because I was raised in the culture, the time when the culture was not as misogynistic and violent,” he said.

To introduce the task force on the day of her passing, he added, “is to give honor to her and to pay homage to her as a single Black mom in America and pay homage to all the single Black mothers in America and all the women out there loving their sons and doing the best they can for their children, their families.”

But the timing of the task force also aligns with Black History Month and an election year — something that the New York Democrat said was intentional.

“Artists have held the establishment accountable for many years and during election years, many artists, many people in the community and culture, continue to not trust as it relates to what we’re doing on the hill,” Bowman explained.

The result is less voter turnout and overall less interaction between legislators and the community. The task force can begin to rebuild that trust as they urge voters of color to trust the process and cast their ballots come November.

“Election season is critical to build authentic relationships … in terms of what the needs are, what the challenges are, what the struggles are and what the aspirations are,” the congressman said.

In addition to Bowman, the task force will be led by Democratic Reps. Hank Johnson (Ga.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.) and Andre Carson (Ind.). No Republicans are part of the task force.