Daily Archives: February 24, 2017

WASHINGTON The Israeli government is blocking an American citizen from taking his post with Human Rights Watch in Israel, accusing the group of engaging in politics in the service of Palestinian propaganda.

The 39-year-old Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization sent a request in July 2016 for its new Israel and Palestine program director, Omar Shakir, to start his assignment in October. The approval process is supposed to take 60 days, but Human Rights Watch heard nothing back until Monday.

The group received a letter from Israels Interior Ministry denying the work permit on the grounds that we were not a real human rights organization, said Shakir, a California native of Iraqi descent with a masters degree from Georgetown and a law degree from Stanford.

The Interior Ministry cited guidance from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a letter explaining its decision not to grant Human Rights Watchs request. The opinion received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that, for some time now, this organizations public activities and reports have engaged in politics in the service of Palestinian propaganda, while falsely raising the banner of human rights, and therefore recommended denying the application, the letter stated.

The Israeli government did not respond to The Huffington Posts requests for comment.

Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

Human Rights Watch has operated in Israel for three decades, Shakir said. The last director of the Israel and Palestine program was an Israeli national and did not need a work permit. However, previous regional directors needed and received work permits from the Israeli government, he added.

On theIsrael/Palestinepage on its website, Human Rights Watch criticizes Israel for severe and discriminatory restrictions on Palestinians human rights and for building unlawful settlements in the occupied West Bank. But it also criticizes the Palestinian Authority for arresting dissenting students and activists and Hamas security forces in Gaza for using torture.

This decision and the spurious rationale should worry anyone concerned about Israels commitment to basic democratic values, Iain Levine, who oversees Human Rights Watchs research and reporting, said in a statement. It is disappointing that the Israeli government seems unable or unwilling to distinguish between justified criticisms of its actions and hostile political propaganda.

Human Rights Watch pointed to a law Israel passed last July that increased reporting requirements for organizations that support Palestinian groups and receive foreign funds, but not for those that support the expansion of Jewish settlements.

Human Rights Watch got a vote of support onThursday from the U.S. State Department, whose acting spokesman, Mark Toner, said it strongly disagreed with Israels description of the group.

HRW is a credible human rights organization and even though we do not agree with all of their assertions or conclusions, given the seriousness of their efforts, we support the importance of the work they do, Toner said. We reference HRW reports in our own reporting, including our annual human rights reports.

Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978 to monitor compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which included guarantees of human rights. The nonprofit now operates in some 90 nations to report on human rights conditions. In 1997, a group it co-founded, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Israel joins Egypt, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea on the list of nations that refuse entry to Human Rights Watch to monitor human rights conditions.

Continued here:
Israel Accuses Human Rights Watch Of 'Propaganda,' Denies Access - Huffington Post

A research project is examining how the establishment of Russias Northern Sea Route has shaped the lives of residents along the countrys northern coast, amid the booms and busts of industrialization.

Most discussion about ABOUT Russias Northern Sea Route focuses on shipping traffic and sea ice. However, an anthropological study is taking a different tack, by looking at how industrialization along the route has affected northern residents.

Connecting the ports of Norway and Japan, the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is roughly half the distance of the southern route between the same two destinations through the Suez Canal. This translates to a saving of around 10 days of travel and related fuel costs. However, the NSR is often impassable for parts of the year due to sea ice. As climate change claims more and more summer ice, though, the routes navigational window is rapidly changing, and could potentially grow to six months of the year by the end of the century. Ice levels were at the second lowest yearly minimum on record during last Septembers travel season, despite some areas holding more ice than normal, such as the Laptev Sea. For convoys equipped with icebreakers, its been a year of firsts for winter travel.

The Russian government celebrates the thaw as the beginning of a new era. For the respected Arctic anthropologist and research lead, Nikolai Vakhtin, its an era that must be studied. His latest project is a partnership between Tyumen State University in western Siberia and the European University in St. Petersburg. Vakhtin works out of the latter, in the same port city where Russias nuclear icebreakers are built (and recent birthplace of Arktika, heralded for her ability to slice through ice 4m/13ft deep). Soon, the team of 10 researchers will commence ethnographies in seaport communities along the coast of the Arctic Ocean from Murmansk in the west to Kamchatka in the east.

The Russian Arctic is a diverse region of roughly 2 million people, including settlers and members of some of the 41 groups represented by the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and Far East (RAIPON). Some communities share a long history of adaptation to change dating back to the frenzied fur trade of the 17th century. Other communities and cities emerged only in the 1950s. Still others, such as the coastal city of Khatanga near the coal-rich Taymyr Peninsula, are being repopulated by Indigenous peoples from surrounding communities following the exodus of settlers in the post-Soviet era.

The idea of the NSR dates back to the 16th century, Vakhtin explains, and its allure has persisted in step with dynamic military, economic and now climatic trends. The result is a region characterized by highs and lows, evidenced by modern hotels and abandoned infrastructure. As if following the jolting ups and downs on a heart monitor display, use of the NSRpeaked in the late 1980s, then slowed significantly in the 1990s. It downturned in the years following the Great Recession of the late 2000s, experienced a short spike in 201213, then dropped once more in 2015.Part of this wild ride is due to the NSRs diverse functions: global shipping route, strategic point of military control and facilitator of resource extraction.

On the shipping side, Sergey Balmasov from the Centre for High North Logistics explains that widespread use of the NSR is hampered by a host of restraining forces such as a slumped freight market, collapse in oil prices, icebreaker technology and seasonal navigation periods. If calculated solely based on ship movement from Asia to Europe without call to an NSR port, 19 vessels carrying around 200,000 tonnes were transported in 2016.

On the military side, it was during World War I that Russia began building infrastructure along the NSR to use as a blockade-free exit route, a trend that continued into the Cold War. Vakhtin explains that military motivations for development of the route persist, and though they fluctuate according to geopolitical tensions, its a powerful stimulant for economic growth in Arctic towns and cities.

But while the future of the Northern Sea Route as a global transportation corridor remains uncertain, its use as a route for moving Russian Arctic resources to eastern and western markets seems for the time being its most enduring material driver.

Although resource prices waver, extensive reserves of diamonds, nickel and liquefied natural gas (LNG) remain locked under the icy terrain, scraped free by glaciers. Interest in the Arctic is rising: It is connected with the rise of extracting industries, Vakhtin says.

Today, the NSR is used year-round by Nornickel, the worlds leading nickel producer, as it moves ore from Norilsk to processing plants in the Kola Peninsula. The Taymyr Peninsula holds significant coal deposits, while the Yamal Peninsula holds Russias largest gas reserves, propelling the construction of an LNG terminal and seaport in Sabetta. At least one platform for offshore oil extraction is in permanent operation in the Pechora Sea. For these industries, the NSR is an important route for raw building materials and supplies, Vakhtin explains. Though figures vary depending on exactly what movements are included, they totaled 6.9million tonnes in 2016.

Usage and viability of NSR as an export route to deliver natural resources out of the Arctic to the markets is on the rise for sure, echoes Balmasov, who is also the head of the Northern Sea Route information office. (He adds that the route still has a way to go given the general lack of backup infrastructure such as shipment and repair docks, fueling stations and communication, rescue and navigation hubs.) Pressure to complete the $27 billion LNG plant in Sabetta is so great that a Netherlands-based cargo vessel just made history by sailing through the route during the winter months albeit escorted by icebreakers to deliver materials for its construction. Similarly, a convoy of vessels carrying supplies destined for port infrastructure in Pevek made history in January by traveling through the western portion of the Siberian coast in the cold of winter. Theyve been locked in ice, however, for a month in Chaunskaya Bay, awaiting assistance from a nuclear icebreaker.

For the many communities along this route, such as the Nenets who herd reindeer and the growing population of Khatanga, these economic and climatic changes are shifting perceptions and realities. Its an environment ripe for study, and the need to know more about the local effects of development is the driver behind the archival work and ethnographies the team will be conducting within 10 selected communities along the route. The balance between industrial development and its influence on the local population is an important question that requires extended anthropological research, Vakhtin says.

At present we can only say that NSR will influence both the life and the perception of the local people. This, he says, includes both hopes and fears.

This article originally appeared onArcticDeeply. For weekly updates about Arctic geopolitics, economy, and ecology, you cansign up to the ArcticDeeplyemail list.

Originally posted here:
Examining The Human Impact Of The Northern Sea Route - Huffington Post