Iraq

This terse but powerful program provides a first hand look at the conditions of life in Halabja, a small village in northern Iraq which was carpeted with nerve gas laden bombs ten years ago under Saddam Hussein's orders in response to t

As the various papers presented in this volume attest, growing populations and ever-dwindling global resources have rendered negotiation over the sharing of natural resources can increasingly urgent and critical issue. Such negotiations constitute a special category within the discipline of conflict resolution, not only because they deal with sensitive environmental and resource issues, but also because they are typically inter-cultural negotiations dealing with various parties and stakeholders, either within one state's boundaries or in an international context.

The State of the Nation: Indigenous nations struggle to be heard over the. din of state policies

During World War II there were fewer than 50 states - countries with centralized governments - in the world, By 1990 there were nearly 70. By the year 2000 the figure could well exceed 200.

Nations - geographic areas inhabited by a common people - however, have not fated so well. We don't know how many there were in the world at the time of World War II, or at any time prior to that. Today there are an estimated 5,000.

If the suffering of the Kurds in Iraq is a preview of the much-touted new world order, then we all are in for some rough times.

Nineteen eighty-nine has been a crucial year in the struggle of indigenous people for their rights. A brief recap of some of this year's important events reveals a future that is both dismal and encouraging.

On March 29, the Iraqi government announced that more than 100,000 Kurds would be removed from the town of Qaladiza. A week later it notified 50,000 people from villages in the surrounding countryside that they, too, would be resettled.

Within a week of the first announcement, the army had surrounded the town of Qaladiza in an effort to ensure "cooperation" with the resettlement program. Qaladiza's residents were told to prepare themselves to leave the area and to pack only their personal belongings.

Most of us think of the Twentieth century as an age of progress, enlightenment and civilization. This is not really true. The enlightened values that may exist among certain individuals or small groups are often overshadowed by greed. In addition, in this century nuclear, chemical and sophisticated conventional weapons have been developed and used at an unprecedented rate. On average, states borrow more money to spend for fighting their own citizens than for all other programs combined.

On 22 March 1988, the hitherto obscure Kurdish town of Halabja in the northeastern mountains of Iraq suddenly skyrocketed to prominence in the Western press as the site of the most recent and perhaps most grievous atrocity of the Iran-Iraq war.

The Hagahai are a recently contacted group of seminomadic hunter-horticulturalists living in the fringe highlands of Madang Province in Papua New Guinea. Although occasional explorers and miners probably walked through their territory in the Schrader Mountains as early as the 1930s and several attempts were made to census them during the 1970s, the Hagahai effectively remained hidden from mission and government influence until the 1980s.

The two CSQ issues on militarization and indigenous peoples are intended to acquaint our readers with the important role militarization plays in the lives of even the most isolated tribal groups. The articles contained in these issues focus mostly on the consequences of shooting wars and on the increasing number of groups involved in them, directly or indirectly. This increasingly militarized world also affects the lives of indigenous peoples in a number of other important ways.

FOR more than thirty years, the Amuesha Indian community of Miraflores (Oxapampa, Peru) has provided young girls as servants to neighboring haciendas and the homes of the region's lumber barons. During the past ten years, as the demand for servants in the urban areas has grown, more and more Amuesha girls have been taken to Lima to work in middle class homes.

HONDURAS

The Save the Children Federation is encouraging small farmers to store their grain in silos made from laminated metal and to protect the produce with phostoxin, a pesticide containing aluminum phosphate. Many people, unable to afford both expenditures, nevertheless recognize the immediate value of the fumigant.

Salvador Ramirez, a local grain merchant, is one such Honduran. He cannot afford metal silos to store his grain so he stores it in plastic bags. To kill bugs, he places a phostoxin tablet in each bag.

On March 15, the United Nations General Assembly voted 170–4 to create a new Human Rights Council, effectively dissolving the oft-criticized Commission on Human Rights. Candidates for the Council will need to be elected by an absolute majority of 96 votes in order to secure a position, and once elected members can serve a maximum of two consecutive terms.

Stuart E. Eizenstat writes that for there to be any order in a post-war Iraq, reconciling the abuses endured by the marginalized minorities of the country – such as the Kurds, Marsh Arabs, and Shiite opponents of the regime – needs to be a top priority of the U.S. government. Without addressing the many grievances of these ethnic minorities, the rule of law may not be established in the near future, let alone result in any long term political and economic infrastructure.