Perspectives on Social Issues
(April 2005)
Respecting Rights and Living Reality of Native Americans
"One of the most provocative displays in the new National Museum of the American Indian is a large picture of a Native American man wearing a loin cloth and laying prone in a museum display case with visitors looking on. Children run up to the picture and ask adults: ‘Why is there a dead body?’ The body in the photo is not dead; it is James Luna, a native artist. Luna is on display in a San Diego museum, the exhibition is entitled The Artifact Piece. Different features of Luna's body are commented on by museum tags, and his personal items are also on display. Another picture shows visitors to Luna's work startled to see the body open his eyes and look at them. The shock sets in that the ‘artifact’ is not a historical object but a living man.
For hundreds of years museums publicly displayed native remains and funerary objects, feeding the perception that American Indians were a people of the past. After an adult explained the significance of the picture, one child asked, ‘Why would a person be an artifact?’
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) was passed to correct offenses against native remains and cultural objects by returning them to their descendants for proper burial or cultural use. NAGPRA represented a major shift in U.S. consciousness on this issue. The codified respect provided by the law led Arizona Judge Sherry Hutt to describe NAGPRA as ‘one of the most significant pieces of human rights legislation since the Bill of Rights.’"
"Respect for Human Remains Viewed as Human Rights Issue," Indian Report, FCNL, First Quarter 2005.
Aging Populations Worldwide
"The world's population will age rapidly over the next 45 years in a signal of potential challenges for social welfare systems, according to a recent report released by the population Division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. By 2050, almost one in three people in the developed world will be older than 60, and the number of those older than 80 is expected to increase to 394 million in 2050, from the current 86 million. The proportion of elderly in the developing world also is on the rise.
But by 2050, the populations of developed countries -- Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and countries in Europe and North America -- will decline annually by about 1 million people, while the populations of developing countries will rise by 35 million people annually, 22 million of whom will reside in the least developed countries of the world. With the least developed nations struggling to fight extreme poverty, disease and starvation, such increases in population portend an increased number of crises. More than 15 percent of Japan's population will be aged more than 80 by 2050, according to the report. Japan has the world's highest life expectancy at 81.9 years, which is projected to increase to 88.3 years by 2045-50. The world's population, currently 6.5 billion, would reach 9.1 billion in 2050, with almost all growth occurring in developing countries."
"U.N.: World's Population Aging Fast," La Crosse Tribune, Mar 7, 2005.
Exploring Civilian Role in Preventing Conflict
"U.N. headquarters in New York City will be the site of a conference July 19-21 (2005) for the UN-initiated Global Partnership to Prevent Armed Conflict (GPPAC), formed at the behest of Secretary General Kofi Annan. Its purpose is to examine the role of civil society in conflict prevention. Annan urged nongovernmental organizations around the world to plan the conference…. Spearheading the planning is the European Center for Conflict Prevention, a Member Organization of NP (Nonviolent Peaceforce). The center has listed five major goals for the gathering:
- Explore the roles of civil society in conflict prevention.
- Establish and/or strengthen regional networks of civil society practitioners and academics, weaving them into a global conflict prevention network.
- Improve interaction between civil society and government, regional and U.N. entities.
- Promote research and theory to help the conflict prevention community play a more effective role in international deliberations.
- Develop an action plan aimed at conflict prevention, possibly for a U.N. Security Council Resolution, as a guide in preventing armed conflict around the world."
"U.N. Event to Explore Civilian Role in Preventing Conflict," Rumors of Peace, Nonviolent Peaceforce, Winter 2005.
Climate Change Effecting Economically Poor Disproportionately
"There is extensive debate at present about the challenge of climate change or ‘global warming.’ What will climate change mean to humans at the economic margins of society, to wildlife, to forests and the other plant species on which all life depends?
Most pressing of all for justice seekers is the fact that climate change will affect the world's poor to a disproportionate degree. The recent report by the Working Group on Climate Change and Development ("Up In Smoke") details a number of ways in which climate change that has already taken place has affected poor human communities around the globe. As these changes continue and spread to other areas, we can expect additional deleterious effects to diminish the capacity for people and communities to care for themselves and provide basic needs, especially for fresh water, successful raising of crops, and securing protection from increasingly severe weather events. Native people in the Arctic are already feeling the effects of climate change in ways that impact their daily lives. As the recent disasters in South Asia resulting from tsunamis graphically demonstrate, millions of the world's poorest people live near ocean coastlines. Rising sea levels caused by climate change will force many of those millions of people to move and they have few options regarding a new destination."
"Climate Change -- Effects on Humans, Wildlife, and Plants" by William P. Mueller, JustPeace, Justice, Ecology Ministry of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes, Mar 2005.
World Social Forum 2005 Focuses on Need for Just Economic Policies
"The 2005 World Social Forum held from January 26-31 (2005) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, brought together over 150,000 people from across the globe to discuss how to build a more just world. Major topics of discussion at this year's forum were debt, water privatization, and land rights. Speakers and participants addressed how access to water and land is impacted by World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities and policies. Farmers, landless peasants, indigenous peoples and solidarity activists shared stories of life under policies of the international financial institutions with forum attendees who packed large tents, fanning themselves in the Brazilian heat. The similarities between the stories from the different regions were stunning; World Bank and IMF policies of free trade, privatization and cuts to social spending were jeopardizing the very existence of the small farmer in the global South.
Structural Adjustment Policies and economic conditionalities imposed on indebted countries as part of new loans and debt relief programs by the World Bank and the IMF often have far reaching effects that are most felt by the poorest."
"World Social Forum 2005 Highlights Need for Land and Water Rights," Drop the Debt, Jubilee USA Network, Spring 2005.
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Gratitude to the Institute for Peace and Justice
for use of their Pope Paul VIth graphic. |
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