Human Wrongs Watch

By Johan Galtung*

6 March 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – Take current deep conflicts in our unstable world and go back in time, aided by dialogue with the parties about “when did it go wrong”.  Chances are a year will emerge. 

Johan Galtung

There was a basic event, or process, polarizing something that used to be more cohesive.

A faultline had emerged that can last for centuries, more or less polarized, up till today, and beyond, if there is no intervention.

The faultlines function like tectonic plates.  Nothing may happen for long periods. Then they shock against each other, with earthquakes geo-physically; Norway-, Euro-, World-quakes socially.

The tern “karma year” is used. Not destiny-Schicksal-skjebne; too deterministic. Karma is destiny that can be changed through awareness.

The reader will find on the next page a Table with seven “current conflicts” and their Karma year(s) as hypotheses.  And analysis, forecasting, solutions, here called diagnosis, prognosis, therapy.  That table, or matrix, is a two-dimensional discourse for karma years.  The table can be read in several ways.

The cultures of indigenous peoples traditionally involve the sound management of wildlife. A Maasai pastoralist holding a pregnant ewe in Narok, Kenya. Credit: FAO

They have managed to alleviate the human-wildlife conflicts that arise in the area due to the intrusion of wild animals searching for water, prey and pasture during drought.

And they achieved this by reducing bush-cutting to ensure more fodder for wildlife on their lands.

Human Wrongs Watch

ROME/GENEVA, Mar. 8 2017 (IPS)  “The women’s movement has brought about tremendous change but we must also recognise that progress has been slow and extremely uneven and that it also brought its own challenges,” warned the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.

Women and girls in the garment industry are often subject to forced overtime and low wages, and on domestic workers because of the unprotected nature of their work. Photo: ILO/A. Khemka

Marking the International Women’s Day on March 8, Zeid said that in too many countries, we are now seeing a backlash against women’s rights, a backlash that hurts us all. “We need to be alert – the advances of the last few decades are fragile and should nowhere be taken for granted.“

Human Wrongs Watch

ROME, Mar 7 2017 (IPS) – Basic rights always need champions, and that’s truer today than it ought to be as around the world we see an unwelcome pattern of reaction to modern complexities ranging from globalization and automation to austerity and dwindling wages.

Farhana Haque Rahman

One alarming example is how the agenda of promoting women’s rights, so far from completion, is being pushed back rather than forward.

IPS has long strived for gender equality and reported from every corner of the world on women’s conditions and their desire for equality on multiple fronts.

Expected progress risks reversal, at times due to implicit bias in access to emerging technologies and at times due to outright political reaction.