Middle East Issues Off the Radar at Ghana Meeting

Hanan Awwad, Palestine Section, speaks at the International Congress in Accra, Ghana. Photo by Barbara Taft.

By Barbara Taft
Co-Chair, Middle East Committee

For many years, issues surrounding the Middle East have taken center stage at our WILPF International Congresses. Most of what has been discussed related to the WILPF sections in the region: Palestine, Lebanon, and Israel. But, more recently, the international Middle East Committee has also had to look at various levels of war or internal strife in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere.
 
So, it was a surprise when the Middle East hardly registered a blip on this year's Congress radar. Yes, the regional fighting is still taking place. And yes, there was a shadow upon many discussions at Congress this year. But there was only one member of the Palestine section, Hanan Awwad, present, and no one officially representing the Lebanon section.  For the past few years, the Israel section has sometimes ceased to exist and, when they have existed, they have chosen to affiliate with other activist groups on the ground, rather than be active in WILPF. Why has that been the case?
 
Over the years, we have passed dozens of resolutions on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. But, like so many other WILPF international resolutions, there has been little effective follow-through. And this year's resolution process involved taking the specific references to regions or countries out of the final version in favor of speaking to the two main topics, migration and militarism, in terms of their many types of impact, with the added aspect of how each is affected by environmental concerns. It is hoped that a tool kit which will be developed within the next few weeks or months will provide a means to actually do something about each of these issues within an appropriate context for any particular region. Many of the issues mentioned certainly pertain to the Middle East.
 
But that left people with specific issues worrying about whether there would be sufficient attention to the things that needed to be tended to. In regard to the Middle East, member Barby Ulmer, of the San Jose, California, Branch, along with Hanan Awwad, asked that a resolution from the Triennial in Japan in 1977, which pertained to the apartheid regime in South Africa, be resurrected, with an insertion of "Palestine" in place of South Africa. This has been passed to the IB, with the hope that it will be included in the decisions that resulted from the Congress.
 
The Middle East workshop, led by Hanan Awwad, began to work on creating a resolution after finding that the 1977 South Africa resolution would be appropriate for the current situation in Palestine. The other major item discussed at the workshop was the status of Palestine within the United Nations framework. It was agreed that we should urge our UN representatives to push for full membership in that body for Palestine, which would provide more opportunities to speak about the human rights abuses and the violations of international laws that are the daily lot of many Palestinians. The workshop was not well attended, which was likely the result of too many competing events (a myriad of other workshops were taking place at the same time).
 
But, after the workshop, I had an opportunity to chat with Hanan about the need for all sections working on Middle East issues to stay in close contact. She agreed to remain in closer touch with our US Middle East Committee, so that we can know which issues are of most importance to her section. We also plan to get in touch with the other Middle East sections and learn what issues they would like us to be working on.
 
Following the Congress, I went on to Nigeria, where friends of mine from Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta, have been struggling to get relief from the environmental damage done when Shell Oil drilled for oil there (from the 1950s through 1993). I went to see how bad the situation is a quarter of a century later, given that adequate cleanup efforts have never taken place. In light of our Congress resolutions, I noted that the results of political turmoil and of environmental disasters are often the same: people are forced to migrate, and are unable to reap the rewards of their former homeland such as raising crops, fishing, and enjoying clean water, sufficient electrical power, medical care, and other infrastructure and development advances that we often take for granted.

I learned after returning home that our International WILPF had worked on the case of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the leader of the Ogoni protests against Shell and the Nigerian government of that time. He was put on trial and, along with eight other protestors, was hanged in 1995. To me, this means we have come full circle, returning to problems similar to those we faced 25 years ago. That sort of recognition strengthens my resolve to make sure that we don't just give lip service to the issues we have named in our resolutions. We need to work to make the world a better place.

Direct comments or questions can be sent to Barbara Taft at beejayssite@yahoo.com.