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11471. Strengthening basic Education in Ghana

Author:
Paul Osei-Kuffour and Kofi Asare
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Ghana Center for Democratic Development
Abstract:
The lack of adequate qualified teachers in rural schools, inadequate financing of basic education at the school/district level and delayed release of the Capitation Grant, lack of teacher accountability, lack of transparency, accountability, and value for money in education spending and low parental support for basic education continue to plague equitable progress in basic education.
Topic:
Education, Government, Public Sector, Rural, and Public Service
Political Geography:
Africa and Ghana

11472. Mexico's First Women, Peace and Security National Action Plan: An Assessment

Author:
Daniela Philipson García and Ana Velasco Ugalde
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Women In International Security (WIIS)
Abstract:
On January 11, 2021, the Mexican government presented its first National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security (WPS).1 The NAP is part of Mexico’s feminist foreign policy, launched in January 2020, and it is a joint effort of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, the Secretariat of Defense (which encompasses the Army and the Air Force), the Secretariat of the Navy, the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection and the National Institute for Women (INMUJERES). An interagency group is responsible for coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the NAP, which is subject to an overall review in 2024. In this policy brief, we analyze Mexico’s NAP and make three arguments. First, NAPs are not only relevant for a country’s foreign policy and international engagements but are also significant for a country’s domestic security. Unfortunately, Mexico’s NAP is almost exclusively outward focused and does little to address Mexico’s own security challenges and their impact on women, LGBTQ and nonbinary persons. Second, we argue that the NAP’s outward-facing objectives are limited to a Western format that overlooks local contexts. Third, the most effective NAPs are those that have active civil society engagement. We therefore advocate for a formal, institutionalized and expanded role for Mexican civil society organizations. We conclude with recommendations for the Mexican government and civil society organizations and sketch what a more innovative and inclusive NAP could look like.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, International Cooperation, Women, LGBT+, Peace, WPS, and Civil Society Organizations
Political Geography:
Mexico

11473. A Gender Framework for Arms Control and Disarmament

Author:
Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Jana Wattenberg
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Women In International Security (WIIS)
Abstract:
I n recent years, gender has come up in arms control and disarmament deliberations. Ireland, for example, submitted working papers on gender to preparatory committee meetings of the Nuclear Non-ProliferationTreaty (NPT) Review Conferences. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) emphasizes that nuclear weapons use affects men and women differently and calls for equal representation in disarmament negotiations. However, such references to gender are so far the exception rather than the rule in arms control and disarmament talks. We argue that a systematic inclusion of gender perspectives advances arms control and disarmament deliberations and negotiations in four main ways. First, a gender lens calls attention to the human and gendered consequences of the development and use of weapons. Second, it exposes arms control and disarmament agreements that lack gender provisions. Third, a gender lens highlights the absence of diversity in arms control and disarmament communities.3 Fourth, gender perspectives help reveal hierarchical power structures and encourage critical reflections on the legitimacy of established processes and agreements. In sum, the inclusion of a gender perspective produces more humane, effective, legitimate and sustainable agreements.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Gender Issues, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, International Security, Women, Disarmament, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

11474. BDS: Nonviolent, Globalized Palestinian Resistance to Israel’s Settler Colonialism and Apartheid

Author:
Omar Barghouti
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Despite its military, diplomatic, and economic power, Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid still views the nonviolent, Palestinian-led global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as a “strategic threat” to its system of injustice, waging a protracted war against the movement accordingly. This essay aims to contextualize Israel’s war on BDS by examining the movement’s origins, principles, impact, and theory of change. It analyzes the most critical challenges BDS is facing and its most promising strengths, especially its balancing of ethical principles with strategic effectiveness and its intersectional approach to the struggle for Palestinian freedom, justice, and equality.
Topic:
Sanctions, Israel, Occupation, BDS, and Palestine
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

11475. Palestine—and Empire—Are Central to Arab American/SWANA Studies

Author:
Louise Cainkar
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Taking the small number of ethnographic studies of Palestinian communities in North America as its problematic, this article situates that predicament in the larger context of decades of academic silencing of Arab American and SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) studies, efforts that represent but one component of a larger political project to quash pro-Palestinian activism. Abetted by the absence of a racial category, scholars continue to face substantial hurdles at the institutional level, inhibiting the robust growth of the field and boding poorly for an expansion in community studies. Yet recent scholarship on Palestinians in North America— exemplified by the articles included in this special issue that center the complexities of identities; activism; and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) solidarities—evidences real changes on the ground for Palestinian activism. Those changes, and continued advocacy for institutional change, are necessary to invigorate community studies, a critically important method of scholar-activist praxis because of their power to enhance a community’s access to resources, well-being, organizing capacities, and local-level power and solidarity building.
Topic:
Political Activism, Solidarity, Academia, Identity, Palestine, and BIPOC
Political Geography:
South Asia, Palestine, North Africa, North America, and West Asia

11476. Disrupting Settler-Colonial Capitalism: Indigenous Intifadas and Resurgent Solidarity from Turtle Island to Palestine

Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article explores the resurgence of Indigenous/Palestine solidarity during the Wet’suwet’en land sovereignty struggle in Canada that took place around the same time Donald Trump’s Middle East “peace plan” was released in early 2020. Historicizing this resurgence within a longer period of anti-colonial resistance, the article attends to the distinct historical, political- economic, and juridical formations that undergird settler colonialism in Canada and Israel/Palestine. It contends with the theoretical limits of the settler-colonial framework, pushing back against narratives of settler success, and shows how anti-colonial resistance accelerated economic crises that led both settler states to enter into “negotiations” with the colonized (reconciliation in one case, and peace talks in the other) as a strategy to maintain capitalist settler control over stolen lands. The analysis also sheds light on a praxis of solidarity that has implications for movement building and joint struggle.
Topic:
Political Activism, Solidarity, Conflict, Peace, Settler Colonialism, Indigenous, Reconciliation, and Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Political Geography:
Canada, Israel, and Palestine

11477. “A World of Tomorrow”: Diaspora Intellectuals and Liberal Thought in the 1950s

Author:
Hilary Falb Kalisman
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article contributes to Palestinian intellectual history by discussing the lives and writings of three diaspora intellectuals during the transitional period of the 1950s: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Abdul-Latif Tibawi, and Nicola Ziadeh. I argue that they fused a conservative acceptance of state authority and avoidance of radical politics with a liberal understanding of nationalism and scholarship, including freedom, secularism, and objectivity. Without a Palestinian nation-state, their participation in the imagined futures of Pan-Arabism and decolonization meant avoiding radical leftist political movements. Instead, they advanced literature and history, surviving in the diaspora as liberals during Pan-Arabism’s transition from a revolutionary goal to a state ideology.
Topic:
Nationalism, Intellectual History, Liberalism, Secularism, Academia, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Palestine

11478. Secularism and the Religious Shift in Palestinian Chicago: Implications for Solidarity and Activism

Author:
Loren D. Lybarger
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article analyzes transformations in Palestinian secularism, specifically in Chicago, Illinois, in response to the weakening of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the emergence of Islamic reformist structures since the late 1980s. Up until then, secular community organizations that aligned with the secular-oriented Palestinian political factions constituted the ideological center of this community. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, a discernible religious shift began to take place. The analysis draws from extensive fieldwork (2010–15) to show how secularism has not disappeared but rather transmuted into new, often hybrid forms whose lack of institutionalization reflect the attenuation of secularist structures and orientations. The weakening of the secularist milieu leaves individuals who have become disenchanted with the religious-sectarian shift (at the time of the fieldwork) with few alternatives for social connection, solidarity, and action. They forge their own idiosyncratic paths as a result.
Topic:
Islam, Secularism, and PLO
Political Geography:
United States and Palestine

11479. Transnational Histories of Palestinian Youth Organizing in the United States

Author:
Loubna Qutami
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article explores the transnational histories that have conditioned Palestinian youth organizing in the United States from the 1950s to the present day. It examines the organizational vehicles of earlier generations of activists such as the Organization of Arab Students (OAS) and the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) to trace the formation of the U.S. chapter of the transnational Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). It argues that in the Oslo and post-Oslo eras, which severed the Palestinian diaspora from the national body politic and the rich Palestinian organizational histories of the pre-1993 period, the lessons of their forerunners are instructive for PYM’s new generation of organizers. The article posits that transnational connections have profound implications for localized U.S. political organizing and that contemporary Palestinian youth organizing is part of a historical continuum. Drawing on oral history and scholar-activist ethnographic methods, the article situates contemporary youth organizing in its transnational and historical contexts.
Topic:
Transnational Actors, Students, Oslo Accords, and Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Political Geography:
United States and Palestine

11480. Reinforcing the Global Norm Against Chemical Weapons Use

Author:
Julia Masterson
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Arms Control Association
Abstract:
In recent years, the global norm against chemical weapons use has eroded, and it is critical that responsible states take action to reinforce it. Systematic violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the malign use of chemical agents have continued for nearly a decade without adequate accountability. These incidents risk growing in severity and becoming more widespread for as long as the issue remains unaddressed. Reinforcing the norm against chemical weapons use necessitates a unified global effort to utilize all CWC provisions and to strengthen the consequences that violators face under the treaty and in accordance with international law.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, International Law, Weapons, Norms, and Chemical Weapons
Political Geography:
Global Focus