Daily Archives: June 24, 2022

How the empire degraded Britain: Tacky’s Revolt, White Debt, and Uncommon Wealth – The New Statesman

Posted: June 24, 2022 at 10:29 pm

When he was not trying to sweep slavery and colonialism under the rug lest a whisper of reparations arises the former UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden wanted you to believe that it was in the gift of the British to bestow liberty on the world. The official mythology has morally superior Englishmen abolishing slavery before anyone else and at their own whim; and, when they eventually grant independence to their former colonies, leaving behind orderly societies with railways and parliaments. Voluminous research over the past 100 years has debunked this self-flattering distortion, showing that the transformation of this system of exploitation was driven not by the enlightened benevolence of colonial elites, but sustained revolt by the enslaved and the colonised themselves. Meanwhile, thousands of personal stories, literary accounts and scholarly works have exposed the ways empire and colonialism were devastating not only to the colonies, but to life, law and politics in Britain.

Three recent books are worthy additions to this body of literature. Vincent Browns Tackys Revolt and Thomas Hardings White Debt recount two slave rebellions in former British territories on either side of the more prominent Haitian revolution against French colonial rule (1791-1804). Tackys Revolt, named after one of the leaders of the insurrection, is a virtuosic account of an uprising (or what Brown terms a slave war) in Jamaica in 1760, while White Debt weaves together the story of a slave revolt in Demerara (todays Guyana) in 1823 with reflections on the contemporary legacy of slavery in Britain. Kojo Korams Uncommon Wealth similarly explores the ricocheting effects of colonialism in Britain, tracing the role of empire and its disintegration in the rise of contemporary austerity, inequality, poverty, brutality, corruption, and the cartoon sovereignty of Brexit.

The insistence, against colonial powers self-mythologising, that the abolition of slavery was the result of enslaved Africans self-emancipatory revolts has venerable progenitors, with the Trinidadian author and militant CLR Jamess ground-breaking The Black Jacobins (first published in 1938) and the American historian Julius S Scotts The Common Wind (published in 2018 but circulating as a photocopied PhD dissertation since 1986) among the most influential.

From the beginning of the transportation of enslaved Africans in the 16th century to work the plantations and mines of the New World, the captives had refused their bondage. The Haitian revolution was the final instalment in a triptych of revolutions the American colonies war of independence against Britain, and the overthrow of the French ancien rgime that roiled the Atlantic world in the closing decades of the 18th century.

The revolution of Saint-Domingue Haitis name before independence began in August 1791 when, amid a fierce tropical storm, thousands of enslaved men and women rose in revolt. Over the next 13 years, successive waves of insurrection eroded the power of the French colonists and led not only to the independence of Haiti in 1804, but to the abolition of slavery in 1833. The revolution was led, CLR James writes, by a line of great leaders whom the slaves were to throw up in such profusion and rapidity, from Boukman the vodou high priest and Romaine-la-Prophtesse who led the 1791 uprisings, to Toussaint Louverture, Henri Christophe and Jean-Jacques Dessaline who commanded formal armies of free people of colour and self-liberated former slaves to resist Napoleons onslaught. They were supported by Polish soldiers who had been sent by Napoleon to suppress the insurrection, but who joined the revolutionaries in solidarity against slavery.

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[See also: The history of the British Empire is not being taught]

At various stages of the Haitian revolution, the British worked to weaken the hand of the French but also to defend slavery, lest the revolt circulate to their plantations in the Caribbean. But circulate it did. The Common Wind tells the story of the news of the revolution travelling throughout the Black Atlantic, carried by sailors, deserting soldiers, fugitive slaves, free men and women of colour, and enslaved Africans who were traded onwards or travelled with their proprietors between Caribbean islands and the mainland. In a feat of archival pyrotechnics, Scott showed how these mobile people and the news and rumours they carried with them perturbed officials who correctly calculated that this mobility threatened the ruling plantocracy.

Tackys Revolt, which has won numerous awards, is a revelation, and a true heir to The Black Jacobins and The Common Wind. If James and Scott insisted on the politicalnous of the Haitian revolutionaries, Browns textured and lively account of the Jamaican rebels who preceded them highlights the enslaved Africans military and strategic skills and experience, gained in warfare in their African homelands. The 1760-61 uprisings in Jamaica were in part extensions of wars in West Africa; their leaders had been experienced combatants and commanders captured and sold on to slavers for transportation to the Caribbean. The plantation owners in Jamaica mobilised a force of soldiers, sailors, militia and maroons who pursued the rebels into the forests and mountains. When insurrectionists were captured, they were executed on the spot or driven to towns for torture, trial and punishment. Some planters wanted to see all rebels executed; others wanted their property restored. In the end, the British government compensated the planters up to 40 (about 1,500 today) for every rebel that was put to death.

Brown shows the expansion of plantation capitalism working hand in hand with the political economy of warfare in Africa and of exploitation and brutality in the New World. Through prodigious and imaginative work with the archives, or, rather, with their absences namely, of the voices of the enslaved Brown shows that, although slavers tried to unmoor the enslaved from their homes and communities, language and culture and sense of self, the connections between various African communities and the diaspora endured despite the violence of the plantation regime.

Although the revolts were brutally defeated and many of their leaders executed or sold on to other islands, the Jamaican uprising discernibly influenced the course of history. On the one hand, in response, the British tightened Londons control over the colonies and the planters, leading to a backlash among the colonists in continental America who rebelled a mere 15 years later. But the insurrection also led to the diffusion of revolutionary fervour, rumours and strategies among the African diaspora in the Americas. One of the punishments used against the African-Jamaican revolutionaries was to transport them away from Jamaica, bringing with them news of the 1760-61 slave wars. Many Jamaican captives and exiles ended up in Haiti, perhaps including Boukman, the oracle who led the first wave of revolts in the Haitian revolution.

The Haitian revolution was a crucial victory in a chain of slave revolts in the Americas that led to the abrogation of slavery, and was a hinge event between the Jamaican uprising and the 1823 rebellion in Demerara chronicled by Harding in White Debt. The Demerara insurrectionists had probably heard the rumours about Haiti; the planters and colonial officials in London certainly fretted about the possibility an 1804 editorial in the Times worried that the revolution in Haiti may afford an example too encouraging to the Negroes in our plantations.

[See also: How the slave trade funded Britain]

The Demerara revolt occurred in the period between Britains banning of the slave trade in 1807 and the abolition of slavery 26 years later. While the British may have patted themselves on the back for hobbling the trade in slaves to their imperial rivals plantations, during this interlude a whole generation of enslaved Africans still worked in iniquitous captivity throughout the Caribbean. Just as in Jamaica, the punishment meted out to the revolt leaders was swift and brutal. The bodies of executed leaders were put on display to terrorise other enslaved Africans into submission. The revolt lasted for only a few days but had monumental effects in forcing abolition in Britain.

Harding, who began researching the book after discovering that his family had owned businesses that sold tobacco cultivated by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, intersperses the story of the Demerara uprising with earnest discussions with scholars and activists in Guyana and Britain about what reparation for slavery might look like. This ranges from familial repayment of white debt by sponsoring scholarships, to disbursing funds to descendants of the enslaved, as with the University of Glasgow agreeing in 2019 to transfer 20m to the University of West Indies in atonement for its historic ties to the slave trade. Pulling down statues of slaveholders, many of which were erected in the period of anticolonial revolt from the late-19th century onwards, has proven much more contentious. A debt jubilee writing off the high levels of public debt held by Caribbean states seems even less likely.

There is no reckoning to be had with the legacy of slavery in a country that denies its own role in it. Britains refusal to settle its debts of slavery and colonialism not only wrongs the formerly enslaved and colonised; it also has corrosive effects on the British themselves. Koram begins Uncommon Wealth with a discussion of British denial about the after-effects of empire and colonialism a tendency the scholar Paul Gilroy has diagnosed as postcolonial melancholia, a pathological inability to face colonialisms malign legacy in British lives. To examine this repressed legacy, Koram invokes the great Martiniquais poet and statesman Aim Csaire. In his Discourse on Colonialism, written in 1950, , Csaire portrayed Hitler as a kind of boomerang effect of the dehumanising tendencies of colonialism: colonial activity, colonial enterprise, colonial conquest, which is based on contempt for the native and justified by that contempt, inevitably tends to change him who undertakes it; the coloniser, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal.

Koram tacks back and forth between various moments of decolonisation in Ghana, Singapore and elsewhere, and the wreckage that the rebounding of colonialism has wrought in Britain itself. Each thoughtful chapter tells a story of how the travesties over there inevitably end up over here. The symptoms of Britains colonial hangover, in Korams telling, include the entrenchment of corporate privilege, the intensification of inequality and poverty, the erosion of state welfare provision, the outsourcing of state functions to cronies, and even Britains departure from the EU.

The British states unbending support of colonial corporations led to the toppling of regimes that dared to nationalise them. Koram compares two such instances that happened more or less contemporaneously: the engineering of a coup in 1953 against Irans Mohammad Mosaddegh in support of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP); and the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, whose British owners supported the 1966 coup against Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. Koram shows how such unconditional backing of colonial firms enabled them to exploit people and the natural environment with impunity, to employ chicanery to avoid taxes, and to work to erode the states regulatory capacity.

In another fascinating chapter, Koram excavates Enoch Powells tirade against fixed exchange rates alongside his Rivers of Blood speech and shows in fine-grained detail how Powells defence of the free market, influenced by the father of neoliberalism Friedrich Hayek, and his anti-immigrant nationalist politics were both reactions to the end of the empire. Restoration of the status quo ante for Powell required hardening borders against the immigrants that decolonisation had created, and shrinking the welfare state that had helped to expand equality among the lower orders in Britain itself.

Most relevant to todays headlines, Koram recounts the history of the creation of a network of offshore tax havens Britains second empire, as the journalist Nicholas Shaxson has termed it in response to decolonisation. During the era of the disintegration of the British empire,British capitalists decamped from the newly independent states and took the material assets and wealth of the former colonies with them, carefully salted away in secretive accounts in islands that remain part of the empire. While the offshore shelters in the Bahamas or Cayman Islands seem far away, the City of London is itself a kind of offshore island, a financial sun around which a solar system of offshore tax havens orbits. Britains desire to reinstitute direct rule in the Virgin Islands is part of protecting this constellation of overseas financial and corporate infrastructures.

Uncommon Wealth shows how so many of the institutions and practices that have degraded life in Britain from public austerity and inhumane border regimes to tax evasion and cronyism emerged from the ruins of a vicious empire. In this sense, not only colonialism itself but the laws and institutions Britain has forged to mitigate the effects of its formal demise on the beneficiaries of empire have rebounded on its ordinary people. In the end it was not liberty that Britain granted the world, but austerity, financialisation, corporate sovereignty and a rule of law that protects the wealthy and the powerful. The infliction of pain on the colonies enriched the colonial officials and capitalists whose degraded, brutal world we all now live in.

Laleh Khaliliis a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of London and author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (2021)

Tackys Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave WarVincent BrownBelknap Press, 336pp, 28.95

White Debt: The Demerara Uprising and Britains Legacy of SlaveryThomas HardingWeidenfeld & Nicolson, 320pp, 20

Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of EmpireKojo KoramJohn Murray, 304pp, 20

[See also: What does it mean to be British?]

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How the empire degraded Britain: Tacky's Revolt, White Debt, and Uncommon Wealth - The New Statesman

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Experts of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women Praise Morocco for Legislation Prohibiting Discrimination, Ask about High…

Posted: at 10:29 pm

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women today concluded its consideration of the combined fifth and sixth periodic report of Morocco, with Committee Experts praising the State for introducing legislation that prohibited discrimination, and raising questions about high maternal mortality and female illiteracy rates in rural areas.

Franceline Toe Bouda, Committee Expert and Rapporteur for Morocco, congratulated Morocco on enshrining the equality of men and women within the Family Code. She also congratulated the State for banning discrimination based on sex, colour, language and disability.

A Committee Expert noted that the maternal mortality rate in rural areas (over 100 deaths per 100,000 births) was far higher than in urban areas (around 11 per 100,000). What measures were in place to improve health care in rural areas?

Another Committee Expert added that illiteracy remained a major problem in Morocco that adversely affected women in rural areas. What measures were in place to improve literacy rates of women in rural areas?

Introducing the report, Aawatif Hayar, Minister of Social Solidarity, Integration and Family of Morocco and head of the delegation, said that during the reporting period, the State had introduced the law against violence against women, the law on combatting trafficking in human beings, the domestic workers protection law, the law on combatting of all forms of discrimination, and other laws.

On the maternal mortality rate, the delegation said although the maternal mortality rate had fallen by 35 per cent, there were disparities in health care in urban and rural areas, and there was a need to bridge this gap. There was a national plan for bolstering medical services in rural areas through measures such as mobile clinics. These clinics provided services to over 70,000 pregnant women.

On illiteracy, the delegation said that there were two State programmes tackling the issue. The State party had conducted an assessment and identified boys and girls in need of support. These children were provided with dedicated educational support. The Government was committed to eradicating illiteracy.

In closing remarks, Ms. Hayar said that Morocco was proud of having ratified the Convention, and it had lifted its reservations to it in 2018. The State continued to uphold the rule of law and work with its partners to promote the rights of women. The Experts comments were of great use to Morocco and the State party would build upon them to further improve womens rights.

In her concluding remarks, Aruna Devi Narainz, Committee Vice Chairperson, commended Morocco on the progress it had made in enhancing womens rights, and called on the State party to implement all of the recommendations of the Committee to further improve the situation of women and girls in the country.

The delegation of Morocco consisted of representatives of the Ministry of Social Solidarity, Integration and Family; Inter-Ministerial Delegation for Human Rights; Ministry of the Interior; Ministry of Justice; Ministry of Habous and Islamic Affairs; Ministry of Education and Sports; Ministry of Health and Social Protection; Ministry of Economic Inclusion, Small Business, Employment and Skills; Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication; Ministry of Economy and Finances; Ministry of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform; High Authority for Audio-Visual Communication; Ministry of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development, Water and Forests; Ministry of Tourism, Handicrafts, Social Economy and Solidarity; Directorate General of National Security; Royal Gendarmerie of Prisons and Reintegration; and the Permanent Mission of Morocco to the United Nations Office at Geneva.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Womens eighty-second session is being held from 13 June to 1 July. All the documents relating to the Committees work, including reports submitted by States parties, can be found on the sessions webpage. Meeting summary releases can be found here. The webcast of the Committees public meetings can be accessed via the UN Web TV webpage.

The Committee will next meet at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 23 June to start its consideration of the tenth periodic report of Mongolia (CEDAW/C/MNG/10).

Report

The Committee has before it the fifth and sixth combined periodic report of Morocco (CEDAW/C/MAR/5-6).

Presentation of Report

AAWATIF HAYAR, Minister of Social Solidarity, Integration and Family of Morocco and head of the delegation, saluted women in Morocco and all over the world for their determination in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic. Ms. Hayar noted that the Committee had encouraged women to manage public affairs during the pandemic. Morocco had tackled the COVID-19 pandemic by both limiting its spread and addressing its social and economic repercussions. It had provided medical protection to all citizens free of charge and financial support for vulnerable groups, including women in difficult situations. Morocco planned to adapt its unified social registry to facilitate access to financial compensation and social services for vulnerable groups.

Morocco aimed to implement Security Council resolution 1325 through its national action plan on women, peace and security, launched in March 2022. The State was also a founding member of the Group of Friends for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls, which was launched in response to the alarming increase in domestic violence throughout the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, Morocco had acceded to the Optional Protocol to the Convention related to individual complaints in April 2022. Morocco had also lifted its reservations to some of the provisions of the Convention.

Thirty-two government sectors and national institutions, the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, and more than 76 non-governmental organizations had been consulted with in preparing the national report. The report covered the efforts of Morocco over a period of about 14 years. During this period, the State had made amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, and introduced the law against violence against women, the law on combatting trafficking in human beings, the domestic workers protection law, the budget regulatory law, the law on the creation of the parity commission, the law on combatting of all forms of discrimination, and other laws.

Equality programmes encouraged a gender approach in policies and programmes, the adoption of gender budgeting, and steps taken in the political and economic empowerment of women. Moreover, Moroccos independent statistical body had undertaken data and gender based analytical research to support public policies on violence against women, economic activity, gender relations and the effect of the COVID pandemic. The State had also adopted in 2021 a set of laws to increase womens representation in Parliament, in the territorial councils and in professional chambers. The revision of election laws had led to the representation of women increasing in regional and prefectural councils. The number of women in Parliament had risen from 81 in 2016, i.e. 20.5 per cent, to 96 in 2021, i.e. 24.3 per cent.

Legislation reform had led to a noticeable improvement in the representation of women in public service, which moved during the period between 2012 and 2021 from 38.6 per cent to 42 per cent, and from 10.38 per cent to 18.52 per cent at the level of senior positions. In 2022, a minimum wage was established in the agricultural, industrial, trade and service sectors, and 15 days paternity leave was granted to public sector employees. Law 19.20 established a mandatory quota for women on the boards of directors of listed companies, and the Government aimed to raise this proportion of women to 30 per cent by 2024 and 40 per cent by 2027.

The Government aimed to achieve more than a 30 per cent activity rate for women by the year 2026, and promoted equitable access to decent work for women. The Governmental Council had approved in June 2022 a decree establishing the National Commission for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.

Morocco had launched major strategies for ensuring decent livelihoods for all citizens. The National Initiative for Human Development, which was launched in 2005 and was still ongoing, had contributed to fighting poverty and reducing categorical and spatial inequalities. The Green Morocco Plan 2008-2020 had contributed to achieving economic and social independence for women through farming initiatives. The Rural Development Fund was established to raise the income of farmers and improve the livelihoods of the rural population. It focused on the construction of roads, educational institutions, health centres and clinics; the provision of water and electricity; and programmes to support farming in mountains, oases, and drier areas. The national strategy called the Green Generation (2020-2030) supported women and youth in rural areas. The justice system had also been reformed to simplify judicial procedures and facilitate womens access to the courts; it encouraged a gender approach and gender equality in the justice system.

Law 103.13 on combatting violence against women entered into force in September 2018. This law emphasised the need for public authorities to take all necessary measures to prevent violence against women.

Morocco signed the Marrakesh Declaration to Eliminate Violence against Women and Girls in March 2020. Following this declaration, unified standards had been established to support women victims of violence, as well as a land protocol. The Declaration also called for measures to eliminate child marriage and combat school dropouts. These provided support for about 20,000 girls who had dropped out of school in 2021.

The strategic vision for education reform 2015-2030 promoted quality, equity, equal opportunities and excellence. It also emphasised the universal schooling of children, in particular girls. As a result of measures implemented, female participation had increased at all education levels in both urban and rural areas.

Despite these achievements, more work was required to achieve the full participation of women and ensuring their independence.

FATIMA AARACH, representative of the National Council for Human Rights, said that the Council had launched a year-long national campaign combatting impunity and encouraging victims of violence to report offences. The Council was working to strengthen the capacity of various stakeholders in the field of women's rights, particularly civil society organizations, and to monitor discrimination against women and girls. The Council also addressed complaints and visited places of deprivation of liberty

The Council welcomed the progress made in the implementation of the Convention, in particular the completion of the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention, the adoption of a law against violence against women, as well as developments in election laws.

While Moroccan legislature had given importance to issues of equality and combatting discrimination and provided for new institutional mechanisms to respect and promote women's rights, there were many challenges facing women and girls, particularly with regard to the abolition of underage marriage, protection against various forms of violence against women, promotion of womens political participation and facilitating their access to justice, as well as cultural challenges that sometimes prevented the promotion of women's rights.While the representation of women in the House of Representatives had improved, there was still no equal representation.

The Council recommended that Morocco repeal or amend all legal requirements that may discriminate against women; pass a law punishing discrimination that was legally binding, proportionate and provided deterrent penalties; amend the Family Code, in particular eliminating the exception in article 20 that allowed for the marriage of children; and introduce legislation on abortion that respected the health of pregnant women, among others.

Questions by Committee Experts

FRANCELINE TOE BOUDA, Committee Expert and Rapporteur for Morocco , commended Morocco for raising the minimum age for marriage and enshrining the equality of men and women within the Family Code. She also congratulated the State for giving primacy to international conventions and banning discrimination based on sex, colour, language and disability.

However, there were still many violations of women's human rights in Morocco, such as polygamy and illiteracy of disadvantaged women and girls, and these would be addressed in the dialogue.

Another Committee Expert congratulated the State for its legislation combatting discrimination. Had awareness campaigns been rolled out regarding this legislation? Did the State plan to amend national legislation to uphold international conventions? The Expert welcomed that international conventions had been given primacy over national legislation, and commended measures implemented to protect women and girls from domestic and sexual violence. What were the barriers to women and girls accessing justice?

Responses by the Delegation

The delegation said that Morocco respected international conventions. It had submitted reservations to article two and paragraph four of article 15 of the Convention upon ratification. A committee and focal point had been established regarding accession to the Optional Protocol. The State had coordinated with the Human Rights Commission on establishing a national day promoting the Convention.

Morocco was working to ensure womens access to justice. It had facilitated access to courts for women with disabilities. It had also established offices providing information on access to justice. Courts were well-equipped to handle cases of domestic violence. There were civil servants tasked with helping women in rural areas. Training programmes had been developed for magistrates on criteria for handling cases of domestic violence, human trafficking and early marriage. Since 2019, the State had been providing training on the Convention as well as other human rights mechanisms. Awareness campaigns had also been developed on domestic violence, human trafficking and early marriage. A national authority on gender parity and womens empowerment had been established. This national authority would fight against discrimination against women.

In response to a request on more information about the national authority, including what budget was assigned to it and how did the Government oversee its work, the delegation said that the national authority on gender parity was an independent Constitutional body. It was tasked with implementing roadmaps on womens empowerment. Following these, a gender-specific budget had been established and efficient measures had been implemented.

Questions by a Committee Expert

A Committee Expert called for funds supporting female entrepreneurship and women in rural areas. What support would be provided for women to access engineering jobs? The Expert called for policy measures encouraging women to access management roles in the private sector.

Responses by the Delegation

The delegation said that a programme was in place that provided support to 10,000 people in accessing employment. A strategy for increasing the number of women in leadership was also in place, and under this, support had been provided to 36,000 women. An empowerment academy had also been launched online, and centres supporting over 500,000 people in obtaining employment each year were established across the State. Childcare support was also provided for women. Legislation had been implemented that called for gender parity on the management boards of public institutions.

Questions by Committee Experts

A Committee Expert said that the law preventing violence against women needed to be brought in line with international standards, as it did not specifically ban marital rape. Certain regions of Morocco could not access the gender violence hotline, and did not have shelters for victims. Did State legislation prohibit marital rape? What was the State doing to prevent feminicide? What were State agencies doing to respect the privacy of victims of violence and whistle-blowers?

Another Committee Expert said that protections of victims of trafficking were not up to international standards. There were no shelters established specifically for victims of trafficking. How many female victims were children? Did the State party not register Sub-Saharan migrants who were victims of trafficking?

Responses by the Delegation

The delegation said that all cases of violence against women were criminalised. Article 486 of the Criminal Code condemned all non-consensual sexual relations, including relations between spouses. Social workers were assigned to victims of violence to provide support and accompany them through legal proceedings.

A committee to prevent trafficking in human beings had been set up in 2019. There had been 131 victims of trafficking in 2021, including both young girls and adult women, as well as foreign women. The committee had conducted awareness-raising programmes on trafficking and had established a hotline for reporting cases. It had also provided training for law enforcement officers on identifying victims and prosecuting perpetrators. It provided psychosocial support and legal assistance for victims, regardless of nationality.

Morocco had expanded its legislative definition of violence to cover violence carried out online. It published pamphlets that informed potential victims about the risks of violence at home and legal remedies. The prosecutors office strived to provide protection for female victims of violence. Shelters had been established to provide services and care for victims of violence and trafficking. Awareness campaigns were carried out to inform victims about the support services available to them. The Government was evaluating the services it provided. A hotline had been established for reporting cases of violence, and cases could also be reported online.

In response to a question by a Committee Expert who said that there was a discrepancy between the Governments report of 131 victims of trafficking in 2021 and other reports, which provided much higher figures, the delegation said that human trafficking was a complex crime and was not recognised in official statistics if certain conditions were not met.

Questions by Committee Experts

A Committee Expert commended that nearly twice as many women were elected in the 2015 local government elections compared to 2009. However, in 2020, Morocco ranked 123 out of 153 countries on political participation of women. What measures was the State party planning to take to reinforce the political representation of women in the next legislative and communal elections? What support was provided for pregnant women in the public service? Only 24 per cent of judges and 25 per cent of ambassadors were women. What measures were in place to increase these figures? Would the State party introduce mechanisms to support lesbian, bisexual and transgender women and women with disabilities to participate in political and public life?

Another Committee Expert asked whether amendments to the Nationality Code gave women the ability to defer their nationality to their children on an equal basis with men. Did Moroccan women have the same right as men to retain their nationality on marriage? Did the State party plan to ratify international conventions on statelessness? What steps was the State party taking to ensure that all births were registered?

Responses by the Delegation

The delegation said that training sessions were held for illiterate women to help them to take on responsibilities in public life. Morocco had implemented measures to ensure womens representation at all levels of parliament. These measures had allowed women to access electoral lists. The quota for women on such lists was 46 per cent. The Government had provided financial assistance to support womens political campaigns. There had been a significant increase in elected women in 2021. The Government had provided training for women eligible to take up positions in the civil service. It had also launched a programme to support women with disabilities in accessing the labour market.

Nothing prevented children from obtaining the nationality of their Moroccan father or mother. A Moroccan husband could confer his nationality to his foreign spouse. An amendment to the nationality law was being prepared that would allow a Moroccan wife to confer her nationality to her foreign spouse. There was no legislative discrimination against women with a disability.

The delegation said that the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community did not face discrimination in Morocco, as Moroccan law protected this community, as with the rest of society, from discrimination. Perpetrators of attacks against this community were punished.

Questions by a Committee Expert

A Committee Expert welcomed that there had been a rise in spending on education in Morocco. However, illiteracy remained a major problem that adversely affected women in rural areas. What measures were in place to improve the literacy rates of women in rural areas? How was the Government promoting the return of girls to school in rural areas? Was the Government encouraging women and girls to study subjects traditionally popular with males? Were there any established sexual education programmes?

Responses by the Delegation

The delegation said that strengthening education in rural areas was an element of the State policy supporting rural areas. There was a high budget allocated to education and teaching. There were over 11,000 schools in rural areas, and almost 50 per cent of teachers taught in rural areas. More measures were required to combat school dropouts. The Government was committed to building more schools, particularly in rural areas. Financial assistance was granted to poorer families to support their childrens education, and to rural schools to improve facilities and support students education. An assistance programme targeted female students under 19.

There were two State programmes tackling illiteracy. Morocco had conducted an assessment and identified boys and girls in need of support. These children were provided with dedicated educational support. The Government was committed to eradicating illiteracy and was conducting awareness campaigns to combat beliefs in some communities that girls should not leave the home. Regional councils provided transport in rural areas to help children to reach their schools.

Sexual and reproductive health education was included in school curricula. The Government had also raised awareness about sexual and reproductive health amongst families, as well as young girls and boys, as part of a national campaign. This campaign was part of a broader strategy for strengthening health care across the country. A website providing health information to young people also had been created.

Questions by a Committee Expert

A Committee Expert commended that girls access to primary schooling had increased by 36 per cent. What was the reason for womens employment rate being much lower than that of men? How many women were covered by the social security system? Were domestic workers provided with health insurance? What measures had been taken to include women in COVID-19 recovery measures?

What had been done to improve womens access to childcare facilities? Did the breastfeeding break imply that women took their children to work? What measures were in place to protect women from sexual harassment in the workplace?

The Expert welcomed the progress made in enhancing health care services to reduce maternal and infant mortality. However, the maternal mortality rate in rural areas (over 100 deaths per 100,000 births) was far higher than in urban areas (around 11 per 100,000). What measures were in place to improve health care in rural areas? Did the State party plan to introduce legislation to legalise abortion? What measures had been taken to ensure that women and girls with disabilities were not placed in mental health institutions?

Responses by the Delegation

The delegation said that great progress had been made in improving maternal health. The maternal mortality rate had fallen by 35 per cent. There were disparities in health care in urban and rural areas, and there was a need to bridge this gap. There was a national plan for bolstering medical services in rural areas through measures such as mobile clinics. These clinics provided services to over 70,000 pregnant women. The national programme on pregnancy and births had been revitalised, and comprehensive medical services were provided for women for 48 hours after giving birth. Medication was provided to women who suffered from fertility issues, and free screening was provided for breast, uterine and cervical cancer. Cases of transmission of HIV/AIDS from mother to child had fallen by over 130 per cent.

The Government ensured access to mental health services and had established dedicated programmes for providing support for women with mental health issues. A campaign fighting stigmatisation of such persons had also been launched, and specialised units for treating mental health issues had been established. Morocco did not impose upon women to go to mental health institutions without their consent. The 1959 law on mental health protected patients by enabling them to file appeals, and this law had recently been amended to protect patients against discrimination, torture and other cruel treatment.

During the pandemic, unprecedented financial support was provided to people whose jobs were cut, both in the formal and informal sectors. This support was provided on an equal gender basis. Employees who lost their jobs were also included in the social protection system, which made it easier for them to access State services. Two hundred dollars per month was provided to persons in support. A $ 200 billion support fund had been established, and a number of programmes had been launched to assist job seekers. Women made up 49 per cent of participants in these programmes.

Forty per cent of labour inspectors were women. A national programme aimed at unifying the minimum wage in the agricultural sector had also been launched. Sexual harassment at the workplace was prohibited under law 103.13, and offenders were punished.

A number of kindergartens had been established within the public sector to provide child care at the workplace. The Government was working on training child care staff.

Abortions were allowed in cases of incest and rape, and no prior authorisation was required. A prevention programme had been launched to stop clandestine abortions. Contraceptives were provided to young adults, and young people were being educated about the dangers of clandestine abortions.

In response to follow-up questions, the delegation said that a programme was in place to increase the percentage of working women from 22 per cent to 30 per cent. There was also a programme in place to create 10,000 new jobs, including 5,000 jobs for women.

Questions by a Committee Expert

A Committee Expert said that Morocco had made progress in improving the water supply in rural areas and improving rural roads. As a result, attendance in education facilities increased. However, high illiteracy rates in rural areas remained an issue. Several national plans were in place to support rural areas, but the maternal mortality rate remained high and access to health care and health insurance was limited. Did women still require permission from their husbands to seek health services?

What steps were being taken to support the high percentage of women who did not have an income? The illiteracy rate for women with a disability was high, and their attendance in schooling and the employment rate was low compared to men. What measures were in place to support women with disabilities?

What services and support programmes were provided to female refugees and women in detention facilities?

Responses by the Delegation

The delegation said that the national fund for supporting rural areas had been renewed in 2016, and $ 50 billion had been allocated to this fund. Support programmes aimed at enhancing rural infrastructure had had a positive effect on women in rural areas, lowering their poverty rate. Jobs had been created, roads had been built, and households had been supplied with water and electricity under this programme. Sixty per cent of rural households now were supplied with electricity. Several programmes had been implemented to improve womens access to employment, including vocational training programmes. Womens trade unions had been encouraged to provide advice to women in rural areas. Eighty per cent of members of agricultural cooperatives were women and 720 financial loans had been provided by the Government to female entrepreneurs in rural areas.

There was a State programme in place that aimed to put an end to illiteracy by 2030. Budgetary resources had been allocated to this programme, and a special focus had been placed on women in rural areas and women deprived of liberty. In 2012, there were over 200,000 persons who benefited from this programme, and this had increased to 600,000 in 2022. Ninety per cent of participants were women.

The judiciary did not discriminate in the provision of its services. Women with disabilities were provided with sign language and braille interpretation.

Morocco had been trying to improve living conditions for women. Specialised centres provided support for vulnerable women. More than 2,800 projects had been implemented and 30 per cent of women had benefited from these projects.

Men and women inmates had equal access to health services. Efforts had been made to optimise conditions for women deprived of liberty, particularly pregnant women, who were housed in special facilities. Vocational training was provided for female inmates to aide their social reintegration.

Women with disabilities had the right to education. The social solidarity fund provided support for over 30,000 girls with disabilities to receive an education.

Questions by a Committee Expert

FRANCELINE TOE BOUDA, Committee Expert and Rapporteur for Morocco, said that the consent of women was necessary for entering into a marriage contract and cancelling that contract. What was the State doing to respect that principle? What measures did the State plan to implement to fight stigmatisation of prostitutes and women with disabilities, and help them to obtain legal aid?

In 2008, the Committee had recommended that the Family Code be amended to prohibit polygamy, but this had yet to be enacted. Would polygamy be prohibited? The Committee had also voiced concerns regarding forced marriages of children. What measures was the State party taking to raise the minimum age of marriage to 18?

Fathers remained the legal guardians after a divorce, which meant that women could lose custody of their children if they remarried. Did the State party intend to implement legislation that allowed for joint custody?

What was the State doing to ensure that children born out of wedlock had the same rights as those born in wedlock? What measures would it take to provide victims of violence against women with appropriate support?

Responses by the Delegation

Women could only be deprived of guardianship if it was in the best interests of the child. Legal aid was provided by the State to all female victims of violence.

Only 0.026 per cent of marriages were polygamous. Spouses could request upon entering a marriage contract that polygamy be ruled out. The State was considering amending the Family Code to prevent early marriages. Early marriages were only permitted when the consent of the minor was provided.

Fifty per cent of women who benefited from State legal aid were victims of violence. Women had the right to share inheritance and property after divorce. A husband could not divorce his wife unilaterally. The State was working to address imbalances regarding inheritances, and to put an end to early marriages.

Concluding Remarks

AAWATIF HAYAR, Minister of Social Solidarity, Integration and Family of Morocco and head of the delegation, thanked the Committee for the dialogue. Morocco was proud of having ratified the Convention and it had lifted its reservations to it in 2018. Morocco continued to uphold the rule of law and work with its partners to promote the rights of women. The Experts comments were of great use to Morocco, and the State party would build upon them to further bolster womens rights. Ms. Hayar assured the Committee that Morocco would continue to support it.

ARUNA DEVI NARAINZ, Committee Vice Chairperson, thanked the delegation for participating in the dialogue. Ms. Devi Narainz commended Morocco on the progress it had made in enhancing womens rights, and called on the State party to implement all of the recommendations of the Committee to further improve the situation of women and girls in the State.

Link: https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news-media/meeting-summary/2022/06/examen-du-rapport-du-maroc-devant-le-cedaw-le-pays-est-felicite

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Socio-economic meltdown leaves Lebanese hanging on by a thread | | UN …

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I have listened to stories of shock and of loss. Young people whose dream is simply to go to school are now chasing informal jobs to provide for their families, Najat Rochdi told journalists at a press briefing.

Others desperately seek to leave and start a new life elsewhere, leaving the country almost void of its most rich and promising human capital.

According to World Bank estimates, real GDP is projected to contract by a further 6.5 per cent this year, on the back of a 10.5 per cent and 21.4 per cent decline, in 2021 and 2020 respectively.

The currency has devalued sharply, while inflation has reached a devastating 890 per cent.

The countrys socio-economic meltdown has been further exacerbated by the Ukrainian war, which is reflected in Lebanons wheat reserves depletion and soaring fuel price, threatening food security.

As unemployment increases, the minimum monthly wage is less than $25.

The Labour Force Survey, issued in January by the International Labour Organization (ILO), shows that almost one-third of Lebanons labour force is unemployed, with unemployment tremendously increasing from 11.4 per cent in 2018-2019 to 29.6 per cent this year. A Labour Force Survey, issued in January by the International Labour Organization (ILO), shows that almost a third of Lebanons workforce is unemployed, with unemployment increasing from 11.4 per cent in 2018-2019, to 29.6 per cent this year.

And youth unemployment stands at 47.8 per cent among those aged 15 to 24.

Joblessness has become the tip of the iceberg, throwing away an entire productive and creative generation that can help build forward a better Lebanon, said the Humanitarian Coordinator.

Global market increases in crude oil prices have been mirrored nationally by cost spikes in gasoline, diesel, and gas with spill-over effects detrimentally impacting the Lebanese.

It threatens to tip thousands of families over the edge into food insecurity, malnutrition, and possibly hunger, she continued, highlighting a recent assessment saying that 2.2 million require support to access to food and other basic needs until the end of the year a 46 percent increase on last year.

Moreover, 90 per cent of families are consuming cheaper food, 60 per cent limiting portion size, and 41 per cent reducing the number of meals.

These are mind-blowing numbers that raise the alarm about food insecurity in the country, Ms. Rochdi said.

She stressed the importance of a comprehensive and inclusive social protection policy as the only possible exit strategy to help between short-term emergency interventions, and a longer-term rights-based approach that guarantees a more dignified future for all.

A comprehensive and inclusive social protection policy...the only possible exit strategy Resident Coordinator

The countrys health sector is on the verge of collapse as 1.95 million people need humanitarian health services a 43 per cent increase since last August.

Citing the World health Organization (WHO), she pointed to skyrocketing hospitalization costs, overstretched primary healthcare facilities, exorbitant medicine prices and acute shortages in medical supplies and power.

Lebanons crisis is affecting everyone, everywhere across the country, with women bearing the brunt of the profound impact, the Resident Coordinator continued, warning that gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and abuse are also rising.

Around 75 per cent of Lebanese women are jobless, and among the 25 per cent who are in the labour force, 10 per cent are unemployed.

And according to the UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF), hundreds of thousands of children go to bed hungry, lack healthcare, and work to help support their families scrapping their education.

This reality is worsening by the day and childrens health and safety are being jeopardized, she said, pointing to children under five missing out on routine vaccinations, some 200,000 of whom suffer a form of malnutrition, while stunting now effects some seven per cent, a worrying indicator of chronic malnutritionlikely to worsen if food insecurity continues to increase.

This must end, she exclaimed. Children are the future of this country, and we all have to support them, empower them, and protect them now, to avoid a lost generation, the Resident Coordinator spelled out.

OCHA

Lebanons UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Najat Rochdi, announces at a press conference, the extension of the Emergency Response Plan (ERP).

Under Ms. Rochdis leadership, the Humanitarian Country Team launched a 12-month coordinated multi-sectoral ERP while warning that short-term solutions must be replaced with sustainable ones, which address root causes of compounding crises.

This lies in the concept of emergency development that shapes the recently signed UN Cooperation Framework and presents a transitional phase to help stem humanitarian needs, said the Resident Coordinator.

Since August 2021, the ERP has received $197 million to assist some 600,000 vulnerable Lebanese, migrants, and Palestine refugees affected by the crisis.

From then through to April, it has provided nearly 650,000 with monthly food assistance, supported 300,000 with health interventions, and around 286,000 with daily clean water.

Moreover, emergency fuel provisions have helped support over 600 health facilities.

However, with 2.2 million Lebanese, 86,200 migrants, 207,800 Palestine refugees and 1.5 million Syrian refugees requiring emergency aid, Ms. Rochdi again appealed to the Government to find a sustainable solutionand take decisive actions in adopting the necessary reforms to address this problem.

Meanwhile, the UN has extended the ERP until the end of 2022, which requires an additional $163 million to fulfil the added humanitarian needs of the mounting number of vulnerable people.

Despite the scale and magnitude of the hardships, I personally see this crisis as an opportunityto unlock the potential that this country has in the path of development and recovery, said the Humanitarian Coordinator.

Sources: UN and humanitarian partners

Lebanon Revised Emergency Response Plan 2021 - 2022 Overview

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UN and Australia give dignity kits to women and girls in Sri Lanka …

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ECONOMYNEXT Sri Lankas women and girls will be given dignity and maternity kits after money printing led to the collapse of the countrys unstable soft-peg with the US dollar has triggered shortages of medicines and other goods.

The current socio-economic crisis is having far-reaching implications on the ability of women and girls to live in dignity as rising inflation, power cuts, scarcity of food, fuel, and other essential items such as medicines have made meeting basic needs a daily challenge, the UNFPA said.

Evidence suggests such socio-economic challenges and its after-effects will have serious repercussions and exacerbate existing inequalities for women, girls and other marginalized groups; reducing their ability to access personal care including essential items for postnatal maternal health and sanitary items.

Given the drop in the level of disposable incomes in households, personal care will not be prioritized. As such women and girls may revert to using unhygienic practices that could impact their health and wellbeing.

The UNFPA said 1,300 dignity and 130 maternity kits worth 35,230 dollars were given to the Family Health Bureau of the Ministry of Health.

The Dignity and Maternity kits provided contain personal hygiene & safety items, explicitly tailored to the needs of women & girls of reproductive age including those in the postnatal period in local communities, the UNFPA said.

The aim of this initiative is to provide the simplest amenities that have the greatest impact on a womans comfort, mobility and physical and psychological health.

The current currency crisis is the worst triggered by the countrys intermediate regime central bank in its 70-year history.

There have been calls to set up a single anchor consistent regime monetary authority with a clean floating regime or a hard peg to block interventionist economists from depreciating the currency in the future and give a chance for the poor. (Colombo/May19/2022)

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Parliamentary Elections and the Future of the Armenian Community in Lebanon – Armenian Weekly

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The Crisis and the Road Toward Elections

Lebanon has been suffering from a severe financial crisis since October 2019. The crisis was further exacerbated by both the COVID-19 pandemic and the deadly explosion at the Beirut port on August 4, 2020. The roots of the crisis run deep. The country experienced liquidity shortages in the years prior to 2019, but the fragility of the economy was buried by the financial engineering of the Central Bank and the political leadership, which sank the country into systematic corruption and ultimately institutional collapse.

Following the collapse of the banking system (one of the main pillars of the Lebanese economy), the country has been in the throes of hyperinflation. The Lebanese pound has lost 95 percent of its value and continues to decline. The country is also facing record-high unemployment, poverty, an increasing crime rate as well as severe shortages in water, food (mainly bread), gasoline, medicine and electricity. According to ESCWA, around 82 percent of people in Lebanon live in multidimensional poverty, compared to 42 percent in 2019. The economic crisis is considered to be among the three worst in the world since the mid-1800s.

To top it off, Beirut was the site of the third-largest non-nuclear explosion in history, which killed 217 people and injured more than 700 others. The destruction displaced some 300,000 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across the capital. Due to a lack of state funding, people had to renovate their homes and businesses at their own expense.

According to a World Bank report dated January 2022, the scale and scope of Lebanons deliberate depression are leading to the disintegration of key pillars of Lebanons post-civil war political economy. This is being manifested by a collapse of the most basic public services; persistent and debilitating internal political discord; and mass brain drain. The report concluded that Lebanons deliberate depression is orchestrated by the countrys ruling elite that has long captured the state and absorbed its profits.

To save the country from total institutional collapse, the government, under international pressure, pledged to hold the parliamentary elections on May 15, 2022. Election day saw severe competition between Hezbollah, the Lebanese Forces (LF) and the Free Patriotic Movement. As one of the largest seven communities in the country, Armenians participated in the elections as well. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) had five candidates. The Social Democratic Hunchakian Party (SDHP) had one candidate, and the Armenian Democratic Liberal/Ramgavar Party supported the candidates backed by the ARF and the SDHP. A total of six Armenian seats are allocated to the community (five Armenian Apostolic/Orthodox and one Catholic, divided among electoral districts where Armenians are mainly concentratedone seat in Zahle, one in Northern Metn and four in Beirut I). However, in addition to the Armenian candidates backed by the traditional political parties, there were dozens of Armenian independent candidates backed by non-Armenian political organizations and civil society opposition groups. There was fierce competition mainly in Northern Metn and Beirut I electoral districts.

By May 16, the vote counts were clear; no side won a complete majority. Unlike the 2018 parliamentary elections, Hezbollah and its allies lost their complete parliamentary majority, but they still control more than 50 percent of the Parliament. The Lebanese Forces Party and its allies barely formed the largest parliamentary block, making way for new young and civil-society-backed independent faces in the legislature. On the Armenian community level, the ARF preserved its three seats (lost one seat in Beirut I and gained a seat in Zahle). The MPs are ARF Central Committee representative Hagop Pakradounian (Northern Metn), Hagop Terzian (Beirut I) and George Bouchikian (Zahle). Jihad Pakradouni (backed by the Lebanese Forces Party) gained a seat in Beirut I. Civil society-backed Paula Yacoubian and independent Jean Talouzian preserved their seats in Beirut I.

I will highlight and analyze the outcome of the general elections and its impact on the Armenian community, which is also facing financial challenges. Armenians in Lebanon are the only community with shrinking demographics as many families emigrate and the death rate surpasses the birth rate. I will also critically assess the decrease in the number of votes gained by Armenian political parties compared to the slight increase in the number of Armenian votes gained by independent Armenian or non-Armenian candidates between the 2018 and 2022 parliamentary elections. I will conclude with a few recommendations for new strategies and the need to adopt a vision for the future of the community.

Election Results and the Prolongation of the Crisis

-Unlike in 2018, Hezbollah no longer enjoys a full majority in the Parliament. It lost Christian allies, but it also gained some Sunni allies. Interestingly, the Syrian government also lost some allies. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party, one of the largest secular pro-Syria political parties, lost all of its seats due to internal divisions. There was also exaggeration in the Western mainstream media that the anti-Hezbollah camp and the opposition were victorious. This power shift (Hezbollah not enjoying a complete majority) does not necessarily mean that the pro-American/Saudi camp now has a majority in the Parliament. The Lebanese Forces and the Phalanges alongside other Western-oriented independent MPs cannot form a majority. In order to gain a majority in the Parliament, both sides have to try to attract and win over the independent and civil society-backed MPs and cooperate with their rivals. It is worth mentioning that many of these new independent MPs are very flexible and not able to form a unified opposition parliamentary bloc since they are diverse. Some of them are leftists, others liberals and some have political affiliation with other local or regional players. Hence, not all civil society-backed opposition MPs are pro-Western as the Western media have portrayed.

-With a 49 percent voter turnout, the Lebanese Forces party has the largest number of MPs19. Its Christian rivalthe Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), which had the largest parliamentary blocbrought 17 seats and gained much fewer votes. However, combined with the ARF, the FPM will again preserve its largest parliamentary share. Hence, both the FPM and the LF will try to attract some independent MPs to increase their parliamentary share.

-The Saudi embassy has been cautious not to publicly support any side though there are rumors that Saudi Arabia has financed anti-Hezbollah groups learned from its past mistakes never to put all its eggs in one basket. The embassy will support groups like LF, Phalanges and independent Sunni blocks to contain the Iranian influence in Lebanon. Also, former PM Saad Hariris Future Movement brought eight MPs despite not formally running under the Future Movement banner. This could pave the way in the future to bring Hariri back to politics.

-Turkey also gained some loyal MPs. Turkey had been active in Lebanon with its soft power politics. After the elections, many Sunni MPs and politicians rushed to the Turkish embassy to get blessing and political support from the ambassador. Two candidates, one in Tripoli and the other in Beirut II electoral districts with close ties with Ankara, entered the Parliament.

-It is unclear how the next cabinet will be formed, if the LF will join and how it will engage with Hezbollah. Many analysts share their concern that this era will witness a lot of security concerns, similar to the Tayouneh incidents where supporters and partisans of LF clashed with Amal and Hezbollah armed partisans. Diplomatic sources also expressed some concerns to me about potential clashes in the future between Hezbollah and the Arab Sunni tribes in Khaldeh. Such events may continue until the Presidential elections (October 2022). There are concerns that the Sunni-Shia conflict may be replaced by a Christian-Shia conflict and this will be disastrous for the Christians but will also threaten Hezbollahs Christian legitimacy.

Historically, whenever the balance of power shifts in Lebanon, the country ends up in a conflict/crisis. This was the case in 1958, 1975 and 2008. If some members of the civil society ally with the LF and other anti-Hezbollah forces and try to challenge the current system and Hezbollah, then Hezbollah may react. Some analysts argue that regional actors may push some politicians toward such a scenario to provoke the system and facilitate its collapse and arrange a new political and economic system in Lebanon.

If the MPs fail to select a PM to form a new cabinet, the current (resigned) government will take care of the country until the Presidential elections in October (if a President is elected). I fear that Lebanon may end up in an institutional crisis. If the Presidential office is vacant, constitutionally, the Parliament cannot consult to select a Prime Minister. Hence, the executive branch would be completely paralyzed. Thus, the 2008 scenario will be repeated and street clashes may occur between Shias and Christians. This may require regional and Western intervention, and foreign powers may impose an agreement or a new system on Lebanon similar to the Taif agreement in 1989 or the Doha agreement in 2008.

-The major parliamentary blocs will consult the President, and a government will be formed. With the end of President Michel Aouns term, the new government will take the executive role as the Presidential powers will go to the cabinet. Some may fear that the President would transfer his power to the army chief and not the Prime Ministers office. This may invite constitutional problems and drive the country to institutional collapse which may force the emergence of a new political system. The economic situation will also worsen. A major European diplomatic source confirmed to me that Europe is not ready to help Lebanon if the government doesnt adopt structural reforms, and some European leaders are seriously thinking of letting the country collapse so that politicians beg for mercy and agree on reforms. This will be very painful for the poor and middle-class as Lebanon is witnessing a brain drain.

Challenges in the Armenian Community

According to Joanne Randa Nucho, Armenian political parties have been involved in larger inter-confessional alliances and factions within the Lebanese political world for decades. Lebanese Armenians are now more visible and vocal players in Lebanese politics; their objective has been the safety and security of Armenians. It is worth mentioning that after the end of the Civil War in Lebanon (1975-1990) and the emigration of thousands of Armenians, their political influence has been limited compared to the 1960s and early 1970s. Thats when the number of Armenians exceeded 200,000 in Lebanon, and they were represented with strong, active leaders. Media attention was given in the last few elections to the Armenian swing vote as the one sect that could determine which political faction would become dominant. However, since 1992, the percentage of Armenian voters has been around 24 percent of registered voters. Many Armenians had emigrated and upon their deaths, their names have not been omitted from the registered voters lists. The Armenian community is the only community in Lebanon where its number is shrinking; this is mainly because of emigration, and the new generation abroad is not being encouraged to apply for Lebanese citizenship.

Despite that, the community and its institutions are still active in safeguarding the political rights of the Armenians on one hand and addressing the minimum social, educational and economic needs of the community. In December 2020, in collaboration with the German Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, I published a paper titled Communitarianism and Crisis Response: The Model of Lebanese-Armenians where I highlighted and analyzed the role of Armenian political, social and religious institutions in shaping the life of the community. These institutions led by the churches or parties were influential in fundraising and addressing the needs of the Lebanese-Armenians in times of crisis. For example, the ARF-led Parliamentary bloc had already implemented several social and educational projects for Armenians, such as granting scholarships for Armenian university students, covering marriage expenses in church and giving financial aid to families with more than three children. The party also initiated the COVID Crisis Committee which raised money for Armenian families in need and provided them with ration packs, medical assistance and free hospitalization for all those who were affected by the pandemic. During the Beirut blast, hundreds of youth and volunteers from the ARF, SDHP and AGBU were on the streets in eastern Beirut and Bourj Hammoud to help injured families, shelter them and renovate their houses.

Nevertheless, despite this, the voting share of the Armenian political parties has slightly improved. In 2018, Armenian political parties brought 12,924 preferable votes out of the 24,707 total Armenian voters. In 2022, Armenian political party candidates brought 13,567 preferable votes out of the total votes. In an interview with the policy and research specialist at Information International Mohammad Chamseddine, the researcher highlighted that the number of Armenian voters in 2022 was around 21,000. Its worth mentioning that not all of the remaining Armenian votes went toward independent Armenian candidates; non-Armenian candidates took a share as well. This trend was new for the Armenians. On the other hand, for the sake of comparison, by counting the sectarian preferable votes for the three ARF elected MPs and the candidates, we see that 70 to 90 percent of their voters were Armenians. Armenian MPs and candidates who were supported by non-Armenian political parties or civil society opposition groups gathered less than 10 to 20 percent of Armenian votes and were elected mainly by non-Armenian voters. In this context, it is important to mention that non-Armenian candidates have also attracted a large number of Armenian voters. This trend has been increasing over time, either due to vote buying or political affiliations.

To address the above-mentioned gap, questions should be raised to improve the situation and adopt programs to attract the youth and engage them in community work and political activism.

Future Questions and Recommendations

This analysis has shown that the strength of mobilizing the votes of Armenian voters in favor of Armenian traditional political parties is decreasing. While votes have increased compared to 2018, the share of Armenian votes for non-partisan or non-Armenian candidates has also increased. Even though the parties and their sister organizations are doing enormous humanitarian work (COVID-19 crisis response, renovating properties damaged due to the Beirut Port explosion, providing monthly stipends and food to needy families), there is still a gap between the leadership and the young generation. The traditional political parties must try to narrow this gap by incorporating the youth in the junior-level decision-making process so that they feel their voices and demands are not suppressed nor isolated but heard and appreciated. Our institutions will prosper as these young people will bring their creative and progressive initiatives and merge with the institutionalized ideas of the traditional institutions. This may be a challenging task as traditional institutions historically always clash with reform and modernization. However, reforms can be the best cure to avoid a future vacuum or institutional crisis and facilitate power transition.

Generally, though not necessarily always the case, the young generation has always been rebellious and the first to jump on waves of change. Unlike the old generation, the young generation has not witnessed the horrors of the Lebanese Civil War and has not seen the sacrifices of the youth of Armenian political parties while defending Armenian neighborhoods and properties (churches, schools, shops and residences). Therefore, mentioning the sacrifices of the older generation during electoral rallies or campaigns for political gains is not useful as these memories have lost the sense of mobilization among the youth. This is a common issue where our political parties fall into the trap of history. Elections are not about the past but about the future. The attendees of the rallies are neither historians nor are interested in history lessons; they are citizens concerned about their future.

With the wave of globalization, there is a renewed attack against everything associated with institutions and traditionalism. For this reason, political parties, religious institutions and often any bureaucratic association have been a target of such criticism. How to avoid such criticism? Armenian political parties in Lebanon and generally in the Middle East, after the experiences in Iraq, Syria and other countries (wave of terrorism, authoritarianism), have developed a certain immunity against modernization, became conservative and avoided taking extreme political positions by not addressing public demands. Instead, they secluded themselves in communitarianism and community activism. This trend has not been welcomed by the general youth class whose demands have gone beyond communitarianism. Now that the youth have individual demands, which are a reflection of basic rights of a citizen, such as public health care, having full access to clean water, electricity, environmental rights, employment and security, political parties must balance between community activism and public demands. For this reason, balancing between communitarianism and public life is essential and being transparent about public life is important to inform the citizens of the public activities of the representative parties and their MPs or ministers.

Political and electoral rallies and campaigns should not be a form of a public crusade against the rival; that is, not what he/she is or hasnt done, but what I/me/us have done and can/will do. Interestingly, in the past two parliamentary elections, the Armenian political parties (mainly the ARF) have always called for pan-partisan unity and called those who would not like to vote for the ARF then at least to vote for other Armenian political parties since only Armenian political parties can represent the interests of the community, as individual candidates supported by non-Armenian political parties lack communal legitimacy. Hence, electoral competition within the Armenian community is no more between different traditional political parties but between the parties and individuals, whether independent or supported by non-Armenian political parties, that had never been associated with community life. Ironically, during the electoral campaigns, rarely partisan candidates touched on the enormous humanitarian, educational and social work that the political parties have done and are still doing to address the needs of the people in Armenian neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the number of independent Armenian candidates is growing, and their voting share from the community is still minimal, but a slight increase has been recorded in the last four years. Moreover, non-Armenian candidates in Beirut I and Northern Metn also have gained votes from Armenians. Of course, vote buying has played its role, but many have voted with free will. The concern of these Armenians must be addressed. Is this because many young Armenians need to see a change outside the traditional community institutions? Is this because they are tired of the same faces representing the community? Is this because the partisan electoral slogans no more attract and mobilize them? These are questions that need to be addressed, studied and analyzed.

Finally, Lebanon in 2022 is not the same as it was in 2018. The community, like other communities, is suffering from a severe brain drain. Many young professionals are leaving and the ones living in Lebanon are suffering from unemployment, searching for jobs or simply suffering from the financial crisis. The crisis has hit the poor and the middle class. It is no longer just about a financial issue, but its also a matter of physical and psychological pressure. New active young faces are needed in the community to keep the Lebanese-Armenian society strong. To attract the youth, especially those who are detached from community life, cultural, sports programs or summer camps can be organized to bring the youth together and discuss and debate ways to reform and strengthen community institutions, assess the current socio-economic situation and incorporate new blood in community work. The current MPs can also learn from the experiences of professionals and draft laws and regulations that address the public needs. A certain mechanism can also be adopted to push fresh graduates as interns and work with the MPs to learn how to frame laws and regulations and engage in political and economic consultation.

Yeghia Tashjian is a regional analyst and researcher. He has graduated from the American University of Beirut in Public Policy and International Affairs. He pursued his BA at Haigazian University in political science in 2013. In 2010, he founded the New Eastern Politics forum/blog. He was a research assistant at the Armenian Diaspora Research Center at Haigazian University. Currently, he is the regional officer of Women in War, a gender-based think tank. He has participated in international conferences in Frankfurt, Vienna, Uppsala, New Delhi and Yerevan. He has presented various topics from minority rights to regional security issues. His thesis topic was on Chinas geopolitical and energy security interests in Iran and the Persian Gulf. He is a contributor to various local and regional newspapers and a presenter of the Turkey Today program for Radio Voice of Van. Recently he has been appointed as associate fellow at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut and Middle East-South Caucasus expert in the European Geopolitical Forum.

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Parliamentary Elections and the Future of the Armenian Community in Lebanon - Armenian Weekly

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A Glimpse of the Chin State and Beyond: One Year after the Military Coup in Myanmar – PRESSENZA International News Agency

Posted: at 10:27 pm

PART TWO: MYANMAR AFTER THE COUP

By PEN

Post-Coup Political Crisis

The civil war and military rule have negatively impacted the public health system and socio-economic development. Hospitals and other health care facilities have been occupied, raided, and shot at by Myanmar security forces, health care workers have been arbitrarily beaten and arrested while providing care, and patients have been arrested while receiving treatment in facilities. The military has occupied hospitals and used them as military bases, in direct violation of international humanitarian law. Myanmar security forces have raided and taken medical supplies from private clinics and charity organizations focused on providing voluntary medical and social assistance, including those associated with religious organizations, and has warned them not to provide care to civilian protesters. Humanitarian aid, including medical supplies, to displaced populations, has been blocked by the Myanmar military. The country was devastated by a disastrous third wave of Covid-19 from July to September 2021. Thousands of people died mostly at home, without access to any health care facility or provider due to the collapse of the public health care system and obstruction of health care access (Green and Anonymous, 2022)

The nationwide protests spread not only in cities such as Yangon, Mandalay but also to all rural areas, even villages in every part of the country. Government, NGOs, medical doctors, factory workers, and people from all walks of life participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM). Many people from Chin state participated in CDM. Right now, the Chin state is the highest participant in CDM in the country. On the following day of the coup, there were anti-coup protest marches in all townships of the Chin state, from early February. In early March, the military troops in Chin state occupied the government hospital, educational institutions and others. The military made warrants for politicians and activists who opposed the coup in early March-April, 2021. Many CDM participants began escaping to Mizoram, India which borders Chin State. The SAC continued to amend the penal code to arrest, detain, and prosecute human rights defenders, activists, journalists, and ordinary people for criticizing the government or the military or for engaging in peaceful protesters. While the SAC amended the Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens, there was no rule of law in the country. Additionally, the healthcare system collapsed amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Millions of people were facing hunger, and tens of thousands have fled to other parts of Myanmar and neighboring countries like India and Thailand.

Because of the coup, Myanmar has become a war zone. Violence is not limited to the areas on Myanmars borders that have large ethnic minority populations but is also occurring in major cities such as Mandalay and Yangon. The widespread violence has led thousands of civilians to flee into different parts of Myanmar and across borders. Ethnic Bamar have enjoyed a privileged position in society and have held a majority of government and military positions. But on the other hand, many ethnic minority groups, have faced systematic discrimination, a lack of economic opportunities and development in their regions, minimal representation in government, and abuses at the hands of the military (Maizland , 2022) since 1962.

In April of 2021, three months after Myanmars military took over the country in a coup and replaced the elected government with its State Administration Council (SAC). an attack against Tatmadaw troops by Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) and civilian resistance fighters began in earnest across the country (Ong, 2021).

Living in Fear

Since the coup in 2021, there are widespread fears that the country is slipping toward full-scale civil war and state collapse. The coup has reached human rights violations such as crimes against humanity, including acts of murder, enforced disappearances, persecution, torture, and imprisonment in violation of the fundamental rules of international law (Lilly, 2021). The people of Myanmar have been completely upset. The military has disregarded its citizens, civilians have been living in fear not only in nearby local militias areas and EAOs but also in villages and cities around the country. Anytime, the military can come into civilians houses and check as there is no law protecting privacy. They have been targeting villagers and launching indiscriminate attacks through airstrikes and the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas of civilians.

Myanmar has been experiencing food shortages, lack of healthcare personnel across the country, high inflation, cash limits and long lines at banks, and the healthcare system has been struggling to deal with Covid-19. On top of all of that, the military has continued to brutally crack down on the opposition. Some villagers struggled to get food because they did not have jobs and were unable to earn their livelihoods. The SAC military government ordered shops to close temporarily in some areas in Myanmar. Civilians needed medical treatment in several hospitals, but there were limited doctors, and nurses because health workers joined the civil disobedience movement (CDM). Therefore, civilians have been unable to take treatment and medical care from hospitals. Some civilians passed away at home, on their way to cross borders and in internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps. Even the father of the author was suffering from gout diseases and later he was infected by Covid-19 but the SAC military blocked the road from the village to the township. He passed away in the village without taking any medication on February 5, 2022.

Throughout the country, mostly in ethnic minority areas like villages, people were living in fear and struggled to get food, medicine and basic needs. The villagers were not allowed to buy food from towns and cities by the soldiers.

About the author:

PEN. is the pseudonym of a writer who hails from Burma, and has a Bachelor and Masters degree.

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A Glimpse of the Chin State and Beyond: One Year after the Military Coup in Myanmar - PRESSENZA International News Agency

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In Powerful Dissent, Liberal SCOTUS Justices Call Roe v. Wade Overturn "Cavalier" – POPSUGAR

Posted: at 10:26 pm

The Supreme Court voted today to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that established a pregnant person's right to an abortion. With a 6-3 vote, conservative justices took the majority and upended nearly 50 years of settled precedent.

The decision, however, was not met without dissent, particularly from liberal Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. In arguing that abortion should remain a constitutional right, the justices called the majority's approach "cavalier," stating that there is "no good reason for the upheaval in law and society it sets off."

The trio also noted that "the Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed." They emphasized the disregard of precedent, writing, "Roe and Casey have been the law of the land for decades, shaping women's expectations of their choices when an unplanned pregnancy occurs. Women have relied on the availability of abortion both in structuring their relationships and in planning their lives."

Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan also pointed to the harsh and brutal implications of the decision on pregnant people. "Some States have enacted laws extending to all forms of abortion procedure, including taking medication in one's own home. They have passed laws without any exceptions for when the woman is the victim of rape or incest. Under those laws, a woman will have to bear her rapist's child or a young girl her father's no matter if doing so will destroy her life," they wrote.

The trio wrote that the decision gives states the freedom to compel women to carry to term fetuses with severe and fatal physical anomalies and opens the door for states to mandate that pregnancies be carried out despite risk of death or physical harm to the pregnant person: "Across a vast array of circumstances, a State will be able to impose its moral choice on a woman and coerce her to give birth to a child."

The justices also called out the decision's "geographically expansive effects" and financial impact on pregnant people. "Today's decision, the majority says, permits 'each State' to address abortion as it pleases," the justices wrote. "That is cold comfort, of course, for the poor woman who cannot get the money to fly to a distant State for a procedure. Above all others, women lacking financial resources will suffer from today's decision. In any event, interstate restrictions will also soon be in the offing. After this decision, some States may block women from traveling out of State to obtain abortions, or even from receiving abortion medications from out of State."

The three justices also repudiated the possible effort some states will make to criminalize the supply of information or funding that helps women gain access to other states' abortion services. "Most threatening of all, no language in today's decision stops the Federal Government from prohibiting abortions nationwide, once again from the moment of conception and without exceptions for rape or incest," the dissenting opinion notes. "If that happens, 'the views of [an individual State's] citizens' will not matter. The challenge for a woman will be to finance a trip not to 'New York [or] California' but to Toronto."

The justices warned that this decision could pave the way for states to impose bans on other reproductive resources, including contraception and the morning-after pill. And while the majority argues the contrary, other rights, such as same-sex relations and same-sex marriage, could also come up for reconsideration. In fact, Justice Clarence Thomas stated in his opinion that the Court should reconsider these cases.

"Not until Roe, the majority argues, did people think abortion fell within the Constitution's guarantee of liberty," the liberal justices said. "The same could be said, though, of most of the rights the majority claims it is not tampering with. The majority could write just as long an opinion showing, for example, that until the mid-20th century, 'there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain [contraceptives].' . . . So one of two things must be true. Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid-19th century are insecure. Either the mass of the majority's opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other."

The justices ended their dissent with a last line: "With sorrow for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection we dissent."

Click here to read the liberal justices' dissenting opinion in its entirety.

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This rabbi made the religious case for abortion 30 years ago it didnt go well. – Forward

Posted: at 10:26 pm

Information is displayed on a table at the Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, Louisiana in April. When the state legislature sought to ban abortion in 1990, Rabbi Robert Loewy told lawmakers that doing so would violate the religious freedom of Jews. Photo by Getty Images

By Arno RosenfeldJune 24, 2022

Roe v. Wade was the law of the land in 1990 when a Louisiana rabbi brought a very Jewish message to the state capitol in hopes of stopping a bill that would have effectively banned abortion in the state. Now, with Fridays Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe, such bills have a much greater chance of becoming law. And Rabbi Robert Loewys 32-year-old strategy may prove more relevant.

Back then, Loewy made the drive from his home in the suburbs of New Orleans to the capitol in Baton Rouge to represent the New Orleans Jewish Federation. The states Jewish community was unified in opposition to the bill, echoing the liberal politics of most of its members. Loewy thought he had a trump card that would sway the religious lawmakers pushing the abortion ban: his own faith.

Jews, Loewy explained to a House committee, do not believe that life begins at conception as the bills sponsor had claimed, but that a fetus gradually acquires more rights as it develops.

There is a moral and ethical basis for a woman to undergo an abortion, Loewy told legislators.

J.J. Goldberg, a former editor of the Forward, recounted the episode in his 1994 book Jewish Power, and described it as a watershed moment in the communitys abortion advocacy.

The case for abortion as a matter of Jewish religious freedom is a powerful one, Goldberg wrote. But it had never before been made in a public forum.

The argument could become the next legal frontier, as Jews and Jewish groups make the case that bans and restrictions on abortion violate their First Amendment right to freely exercise their faith. The approach gained traction in early May after Politico published a leaked Supreme Court decision striking down Roe, which in 1973 established a constitutional right to abortion. The courts 6-3 ruling eviscerated that right.

At the Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice in May, speaker after speaker invoked the Jewish imperative to abortion in cases where the mothers health was at risk. Whose religious freedom are you trying to protect? Sheila Katz, chief of the National Council of Jewish Women, asked of those who are seeking to outlaw abortion. Not ours.

A synagogue in south Florida earlier this month sued to block legislation that would ban abortions after 15 weeks, arguing that it violated the state constitutions right to freedom of religion.

Rabbi Barry Silver brought the lawsuit on behalf of Congregation LDor Va-Dor, which he leads, and said that his goal was not just to send a message but to carve out protections for Jews in states where abortion is outlawed.

Its not just to make a point or something, Silver said in an interview. Its deadly serious.

But Loewys experience appealing to conservatives who sought to ban abortion 32 years ago may be instructive for the Jewish leaders making the same argument today.

Though Loewys synagogue, Congregation Gates of Prayer, was located near the liberal bubble of New Orleans, it sits in a conservative Congressional district that better reflects the rest of the state. At the time he testified on the abortion bill, his state representative was David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan.

Well aware of the legislatures conservative nature especially on abortion Loewy still thought his testimony might persuade some lawmakers by using language they could understand.

I was actually trying to say, if you believe its important to have religion in the public sphere you need to listen to one of the oldest religions, Loewy recounted in an interview this week. Probably naively I thought it would have an influence on votes.

Loewy, by most accounts, did not.

Rep. Louis Woody Jenkins, who was sponsoring the measure, mocked Loewys testimony about the Jewish tradition that babies who die before eight days should not receive a funeral.

We just heard from one crazy religion that doesnt even think babies are people after theyre born, Jenkins told reporters after the hearing.

When Loewy returned to the capitol a few days later to speak to another committee, lawmakers were prepared. Sen. Mike Cross the irony of his name was not lost on me, Loewy said interrupted the rabbi to ask if Judaism also permitted marijuana use and prostitution.

Loewy said that the Torah did not consider killing a fetus to be murder and tried to cite Exodus 21:22.

Thats not in my Bible, Cross snapped.

The incident became known as the rabbi roast, a term coined by a reporter at the time. The community backed off the religious argument, figuring that the reaction from hostile lawmakers was motivated by ignorance and intolerance of advocates for abortion rights not of Jews qua Jews.

Goldberg described local Jews as chastened by the reaction to the religious pitch for abortion access. In framing the bill as an assault on their religious freedom, he wrote, the Jewish communitys leaders may have gone one step too far.

They were holding up Jewish rights as a shield for a separate issue, on the assumption that their opponents had too much respect for religious freedom, and for Jews, to press the attack, Goldberg recounted. As they found out, that was a mistake.

Loewy said that his days testifying against the bill, which passed the legislature but would eventually be vetoed by the governor, would represent the high-water mark of his advocacy on the issue. The fierce backlash to his argument aside, abortion rights was a losing issue in a state with a huge base of conservative voters and the strong influence of the Catholic Church, which is opposed to birth control and abortion.

There are some fights that are just not worth having, Loewy said.

While Loewys approach may not have resonated in Louisiana in 1990, other Jewish leaders remain optimistic that the religious case for abortion rights is a compelling one. After NCJW sent hundreds of rabbis to lobby Congress earlier this year in support of a bill that would protect access to abortion nationally, Katz said that the legislation picked up 36 new sponsors.

It really showed us that there was power in rabbis and spiritual leaders and faith leaders showing up to say this was a religious freedom issue, Katz said. Her organization is also considering legal challenges to abortion bans and said that women who are impacted by those laws could reach out to NCJW.

While Katz emphasized the importance of challenging the idea that religion is anti-abortion, the legal question of whether outlawing abortion violates the religious freedom of Jews remains an open question.

Josh Blackman, a conservative constitutional scholar, wrote a blog post Monday arguing that liberal Jews, like those who belong to Silvers Florida synagogue, have a weak legal case when it comes to abortion because they do not follow other forms of halacha, or Jewish law.

If virtually every other facet of halacha is not binding on members of this congregation, how could it be that this one teaching on abortion is binding so binding, that a states prohibition of that teaching actually substantially burdens the free exercise of religion? Blackman wrote.

Blackmans blog post made waves on social media. Rabbi David Saperstein, a longtime leader in the Reform movement who spent decades working on religious freedom issues, said it missed a key point. The law typically requires only that a plaintiffs beliefs are sincere meaning judges would be unlikely to parse the difference between Reform and Orthodox Jews.

Saperstein said the larger challenge for Jews suing over abortion bans would be that the government could successfully argue that it had a legitimate societal interest in passing these laws that even sincere religious beliefs cannot override. This is similar to the reason why laws prohibiting child marriage have been upheld, despite some religions that encourage it.

Ironically, another potential victory for religious conservatives might open the door to a Jewish abortion exemption. Several Supreme Court justices appear willing to strike down a vaccine mandate in New York State that allows medical exemptions but bans religious ones, Saperstein noted. While Jews have historically opposed such religious carve outs, they may now turn to that line of argument in legal battles over abortion.

If you allow exemptions for anything you should allow it for people who have a legitimate religious claim, Saperstein said, and here the Jewish claim would be very strong.

Arno Rosenfeld is an enterprise reporter for the Forward, where he covers antisemitism, philanthropy and American Jewish institutions. You can reach him at arno@forward.com and follow him on Twitter @arnorosenfeld.

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Pike County native Te’Keven Thomas chasing FBS dreams – The Troy Messenger – Troy Messenger

Posted: at 10:26 pm

Pike County native TeKeven Thomas announced this month that he was entering the NCAA Transfer Portal as a graduate transfer and is hoping to land on the roster of an FBS school this coming fall.

Thomas played his high school career at Pike Liberal Arts and Pike County High School before playing at ASA College in Miami, Fla. for a season and then transferring to Bethune-Cookman University in Florida.

Thomas played both running back and tight end in high school but has been a linebacker at the college level. In seven games at ASA College, Thomas recorded 25 tackles, two tackles-for-loss and a fumble recovery. Thomas transferred to Bethune-Cookman but COVID-19 wiped out the 2020 season.

TK Thomas played his high school career at Pike Liberal Arts School and Pike County.

In 2021, Thomas emerged as one of Bethune-Cookmans top players on defense, recording 72 tackles, eight tackles-for-loss, two sacks, one interception and one fumble recovery enroute to earning Phil Steel second-team All-SWAC honors. Thomas earned his bachelors degree from Bethune-Cookman and will have two years of eligibility left in college.

Im grateful to have been able to get my degree, Thomas said of his time at Bethune-Cookman. I graduated with my bachelors degree and I feel like I did my part for the team and I was just trying to find a better situation for me mentally.

Thomas played in agony for much of the 2021 season after suffering a torn hip labrum, which was originally diagnosed as a help flexor strain.

I appreciate our training staff for sure but I played almost the entire season with a torn hip labrum, Thomas recalled. I had to get my leg wrapped every day and I would do physical therapy with the treatment staff throughout the week at practice and I wouldnt go through as much contact at practices. I would just sort of go through the scheme and game plan. Once it was game time I would do treatments at the hotel or wherever we were. It was like I had to go through this preparation just to play every week.

Despite the season ending and being able to finally get some rest, Thomas hip wasnt healing going into spring practices.

I was doing workouts leading up to spring (football practices) and I just felt a restriction in my body and wanted to get it taken care of, Thomas said. I got the MRI before graduation and go the surgery the Monday after I graduated. Right now Im doing physical therapy six days a week and Im looking forward to being able to play football again real soon.

Thomas said that when he first went to college, school wasnt a priority for him but his degree is what hes most proud of following the tragic passing of his father.

Whenever I entered college, I was so focused on football that getting my degree wasnt something that really meant a lot to me, Thomas emphasized. Whenever I first got to (Bethune-Cookman) my dad took me up there and everything and that was a real pivotal moment in my life.

I told him I was going to do what I had planned and get my degree. He passed away from cancer in 2020, so me being able to graduate and walk away with my degree and also have a good football career at the same time meant a lot to me.

Unfortunately, Thomas wont be immediately eligible next season without a hardship waiver from the NCAA because he entered the transfer portal after the May 1 deadline for football.

I just felt so drained from the situation and the atmosphere and everything, so after I got the surgery they didnt have the masters (degree) plan I wanted to into either and that played into the decision (to transfer), Thomas said.

Thomas said his goal is to continue to play Division I football but hopes to make it on an FBS roster and Troy is certainly a place he would like to see himself at in the fall.

Im blessed to be in a situation where I have to years of eligibility left, he said. I really feel like I can play Division I football at a high level with my ability and my production. I would be very grateful to have the opportunity to come home and play at Troy and it would be a blessing to play in front of my family and my hometown, but any Division I team that takes a chance on me would be a blessing, too.

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Bouffard reappointed chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice – College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Posted: at 10:26 pm

AMES, Iowa - Leana Bouffard has been reappointed chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University.

Bouffard will begin her second five-year term on July 1, 2022.

Dr. Leana Bouffard has shown strong leadership in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice over the past five years, said Daniel J. Robison, holder of the endowed deans chair in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Her astute guidance has led the department to a terrific position to continue to contribute so importantly to Iowa States land grant mission. We are excited to see what will develop next.

Bouffard joined Iowa State in 2017 as professor and chair of the department. Since that time, student enrollment in the criminal justice major substantially increased, leading to a department name change in July 2021 from the Department of Sociology to the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice that better reflects students growing interest in a criminal justice degree.

The growth of the departments enrollment in criminal justice is a testament to the leadership of Dr. Leana Bouffard, said Beate Schmittmann, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Her ability to assess and meet the demands of a growing academic field not only addresses students career interests, but also positions Iowa State as an educational leader in the social sciences.

Bouffard is eager to build on the departments momentum from the past five years. She will continue to seek ways to strengthen the curriculum and research opportunities for all students.

We have started looking at all of our programs to make sure we are offering the strongest possible education and opportunities for all our students, and that we are preparing them well for the future direction they want to take, Bouffard said.

Bouffard received a bachelors degree in psychology from Duke University before earning a masters degree and a doctorate in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on violence against women, police response to domestic violence, sexual aggression among college students and the effects of parenting on criminal behavior.

Co-administered by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts and Science, the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice offers undergraduate programs in criminal justice, sociology, and agricultural and rural policy studies. The department also offers masters degrees and doctoral degrees in sociology and rural sociology.

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