Daily Brief Audio Series
World leaders have widely and strongly condemned US President Donald Trump’s statements on Gaza this week. It’s an encouraging sign of support for international law, much needed in these dark times.
On Tuesday, Trump declared that the US would “take over” the Gaza Strip and that the Palestinian population there would need to be moved out. Trump said on Tuesday that Gaza had become “unlivable.”
He said this – remarkably – while standing next to the man whose government is responsible for making Gaza unlivable and who’s wanted by the International Criminal Court for atrocity crimes committed in Gaza: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It’s time for a quick refresher on the laws of war.
International humanitarian law prohibits the permanent forced displacement of the population of an occupied territory. When such forced displacement is carried out with criminal intent, it is a war crime. If carried out as part of widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population, reflecting state policy, it is a crime against humanity.
These things have already been happening in Gaza, of course.
Since October 2023, Israeli authorities have caused the massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, many of them multiple times over. Senior Israeli officials have also declared their intent to displace the Palestinian population of Gaza.
Israeli authorities have also deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the Palestinian population in Gaza. This includes by deliberately depriving them of food, water, and other things necessary for their survival, amounting to the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide.
The US government under Joe Biden supported the Israeli government throughout its assault on Gaza, particularly by its continued arms sales to Israel.
Trump’s new proposal, if implemented, would amount to an alarming escalation of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. It would also move the US from being complicit in war crimes (through arms sales) to direct perpetration of atrocities – from a supporting role to a leading role.
Recognizing the threat both to Palestinians and to international law, many were quick to reject Trump’s idea.
Palestinians balked, naturally. For them it was yet another case of outside powers discussing their fate while ignoring their opinions: “about us, without us,” once again.
But rejection was also immediate from many other corners, as well.
This included governments from neighboring countries and distant countries, and even governments that seem to agree on little else these days: Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, Ireland, Jordan, Russia, and the United Kingdom, just to mention a few. Other global leaders like the UN human rights office and the UN secretary-general also condemned Trump’s proposal.
It’s not every day humanity hears the world’s most powerful man openly suggest committing mass atrocity crimes. Thank goodness, at least, the global rejection of it has been swift and clear.
There are at least three things that Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger all have in common besides being neighbors in the Sahel region of Africa.
One, they are all run by military juntas.
Two, those military juntas are all committing serious human rights abuses, including atrocities. Conflict-related abuses against civilians, in particular, are rife in the region, as well as restrictions of civil and political rights.
Three, they have all now officially left the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
That third point has more in common with the first two than may be apparent at first glance.
Within ECOWAS, there’s an institution known as the Community Court of Justice. Since 2005, this Court has had jurisdiction to hear human rights cases brought by citizens of member states. People don’t even have to go through their local courts first; they can go straight to ECOWAS’s Community Court of Justice.
The Court has issued landmark decisions on human rights issues, including in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.
So, you can see at least one reason why the military juntas in these countries – whose security forces are committing grave human rights abuses – would want to pull out of ECOWAS. It helps them evade accountability by putting such crimes outside the jurisdiction of the Court.
How convenient for them.
It’s not at all convenient for the victims of the military juntas’ abuses and atrocities. They lose a key pathway to justice.
They’ve already lost their local and national pathways, of course. Authorities under the military juntas in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger barely investigate, much less prosecute, security forces, armed groups, and others responsible for grave offenses committed during the ongoing armed conflict.
Now, victims have even fewer options.
In the new confederation formed by the three countries, it’s clear justice and accountability are not priorities.
A political activist from Mali, now in exile in France, summed it up for HRW last week:
“Since they came to power by force, these military governments have systematically failed to hold people responsible for egregious human rights abuses... This latest move only confirms their disregard for human rights and the rule of law.”
Why do some white men in the US seem so afraid of the prospect of racial equality?
Are they worried the faces of leadership in the US might one day be as diverse as those across the country at large, and they won’t feel safe in a world where not everyone in authority looks like mommy and daddy, the comforting authority figures of their boyhood?
Or is it simply because some of them are nervous about their own mediocrity and fear that, if the scales of society were a bit more even, they couldn’t compete? That, on some level, they sense they need systematic discrimination against non-whites to prosper?
Those who grew up in white America, like this author, may be familiar with such insecurities and feel they play a role here.
But whatever the reason, a lot of politicians in the US love to whip up these fears among white Americans and use such amplified anxieties to boost their own popularity and power. None more so, perhaps, than Donald Trump.
His white-supremacist-style campaign rhetoric was bad enough, but his new administration’s attacks on long-standing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies threaten serious damage to long-standing pillars of modern American society.
Institutions in the US began creating DEI and affirmative action programs after the fall of racial apartheid in the US. The 1954 US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education,outlawing school segregation, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, are bedrock principles.
They created protections people in the US have relied upon for more than 60 years.
Human Rights Watch expert Trey Walk, details three new executive orders by Trump targeting DEI.
One order directs federal agencies to end all DEI activities. It also directs agencies to withdraw plans written under the Biden-Harris administration to end systemic racism and other inequities.
A second order eliminates DEI programs in the military, even though the Department of Defense has acknowledged that some active duty and former military members were affiliated with white supremacist groups.
A third order calls DEI programs discriminatory and claims they should be ended in the private sector, too. This order rescinds executive orders dating back to 1965 that sought to address racism and promote equal opportunities for jobs.
Trump plans to “deter” such programs by launching investigations into corporations, nonprofits, and professional associations. Companies have already begun announcing plans to end their DEI programs.
Students will also be harmed. Public schools and colleges risk losing federal funding for promoting equal opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities, women and girls, and LGBT youth.
In short, these orders and other moves are aiming to undo hard-won anti-discrimination efforts the US has lived by for generations (or at least, aimed to live up to). It’s a vicious political move based on unwarranted fears among some white Americans that Trump himself raised to fever pitch using hateful rhetoric and lies.
Now, as Trey says: “The dams built to hold off discrimination are under attack. We must not let them fall.”
A horrific storm – the worst in nearly a century – ravaged the area. It leveled homes and wrecked infrastructure.
In the aftermath, authorities weren’t responding fast enough to help survivors, who were struggling even to find clean water. People were desperate. People were traumatized.
Then, the president of the country showed up. He stood in front of a local crowd and, using foul language, angrily told residents they were lucky to be where they were.
In France.
Mayotte – a group of islands in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Comoros – is a French overseas department. It is an integral part of France and an integral part of the European Union.
Mayotte’s troubles did not begin when Cyclone Chido hit the island chain in December. The former French colony was already the poorest part of France and one of the worst-off parts of the European Union by almost every social indicator. French authorities have long failed to provide adequate access to safe water and sanitation to people living in Mayotte.
The cyclone took an already unacceptable situation and made things even worse.
Some reconstruction efforts are now underway. Students are finally returning to school this week, although many school buildings remain heavily damaged by the storm.
But the real question today is, will French authorities simply aim for a bare minimum patch-up job? Or will they realize this is an opportunity to finally address residents’ pressing needs?
President Emmanuel Macron’s insult to the people of Mayotte in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone was not a great start. And it was hardly the only bad omen.
Rather than face up to the consequences of decades of France’s underinvestment in Mayotte or examine how extreme weather events like this will probably become more likely with climate change, some politicians are instead looking for someone to blame.
And, as so often happens apparently everywhere these days, migrants are the favorite scapegoat. Estimates suggest nearly one-third of Mayotte’s population is undocumented, though this may be overstated.
French authorities, including Macron, have suggested the official response to the cyclone impacts on Mayotte will include a crackdown on undocumented migration. Anti-immigration steps are expected to be part of a new bill that will be introduced by the French government in the coming weeks.
It’s hard to see how demonizing migrants will address insecurity and poor sanitary conditions in Mayotte. Poor, powerless migrants aren’t the reason France has failed to improve housing, health, education, and other basic services in Mayotte for decades.
The French government has the power; the French government has the responsibility. They should stop blaming the powerless and get on with the job of bringing standards in Mayotte at least up to the level of those in mainland France.
One of the few rays of light in an otherwise dismal 2024 was the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh in August. The overturning of her corrupt and brutal rule – sustained through three consecutive unfair elections – gave the country an opportunity for systematic reform: away from autocracy and towards democracy.
This opportunity for change has come with a heavy price, of course. Nearly 1,000 Bangladeshis lost their lives fighting for democracy, mostly at the hands of the country’s security forces.
The best way to honor their sacrifice is to firmly embed democratic reforms, including respect for the rule of law and human rights. There also needs to be a push for accountability for past crimes by security forces, like disappearances, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, surveillance, and torture.
The interim government, under Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, has made important commitments to implementing reforms and holding free and fair elections. They’ve dropped many politically motivated cases filed by the previous administration. The extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances have stopped. People say they can speak freely.
In February, a commission headed by Yunus is set to begin implementing reforms to the electoral system, justice system, public administration, the police, the anti-corruption office, and the constitution.
In short, things seem to be moving quickly and determinedly in Bangladesh.
However, not everything is moving in the right direction. Human Rights Watch has found that some same patterns of security force abuses have emerged since Hasina’s ouster.
Only today, the targets are former supporters of Hasina’s Awami League, including journalists. The police are again arbitrarily detaining people and filing mass criminal complaints against unnamed people, which allows the police to intimidate and threaten virtually anyone with arrest.
In the first two months since the interim government took office, over 1,000 police cases were filed against tens of thousands of people, mainly Awami League members, accusing them of murder, corruption, or other crimes.
Of course, there needs to be justice for past crimes. Those with command responsibility for abuses under the previous government should be held to account.
But mass complaints without adequate evidence only undermine justice, and risk opening a pathway back to the abusive past.
There are a lot of folks outside Bangladesh who are rooting for this democratic transition to work and can bring some expertise to the table. The government should seek technical assistance, monitoring, and reporting by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and other UN rights experts.
The current leadership is trying to undo fifteen years of increasingly entrenched autocracy. It’s a monumental task. Enlisting UN rights experts will improve their chances of success.