Masarrat Misbah is a woman who brought hope, who inspired many around the world to contribute to her foundation, Depilex Smile Again.  Depilex Smile Again was set up to help women disfigured by acid burns.  It would find them a new life and help pay for expensive reconstructive surgery.  Her foundation captured the imagination. The idea was simple. Depilex Smile Again would employ disfigured women to work in a beauty salon.

But alas, Misbah is a fraud who pocketed the money she collected to help these women. In 2006, she received over $3 million to build a hospital specialized for acid burn victims.  An altruistic landowner gave her, without charge, the land to construct the hospital. Two months later and nothing had been done.

Manzar Mian, a former coordinator at the foundation, began to suspect something was up. The money continues to arrive in cash only. There is no trace. Mian says over $ 1 million is missing.  Authorities ask Misbah to hand over the accounts. But the books are gone.  Stolen says Misbah.

In 2008 she used a photo of a disfigured woman to raise funds.  The money was intended to send the woman to the United States where she would undergo surgery. Misbah got the money. But the woman never saw any of it and instead was forced to sell her own home.

Misbah is a soul-less scoundrel that deserves a lengthy prison sentence.  To take advantage of burn victims and use their misfortunes for personal gain is perhaps indicative of a larger problem around aid. It is big business. And where there is money, there will always be someone like Misbah.

The link to Smile Again USA tells it all.  Click here to see what I mean.

Read more here (in French).

Following Nicolas Sarkozy’s statement last summer that burqas are “not welcome” in France, the French Parliament recommended a partial ban last week on any veil that covers the face. For now, that ban would only cover public transportation and public buildings such as school and hospitals, not women generally on the streets. It also only applies to burqas and niqabs, which unlike the more common headscarf or hijab cover a woman’s entire face with the exception of a small section for the eyes. But it marks an ongoing trend in secular France to rid the country of the Islamic headscarf altogether.

Proponents of the ban cite the veil’s oppressive meaning and the need to ensure women’s rights as the main reasons for why it should not be allowed in France. The headscarf - whether in the form of the hijab, niqab, or burqa - is a living symbol of the repression of women, imparted on women by their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Only by banning it, they argue, can we free Muslim women from the patriarchal confines that Islam bestows on them and bring about gender equality.

To be honest, this is always where the argument against the headscarf falls apart for me. It is undeniable that in certain countries and societies the headscarf is a tool of repression that keeps women veiled and separate from the rest of society. Of course, the veil is only the most outwardly symbol of this repression, and the real problem lies in the laws the prohibit education, employment, or even socializing for women. But the idea that Muslim women in the West, where headscarves are not required by law, are incapable of making the choice to wear it themselves is obscenely patriarchal and actually goes against women’s rights far more than advancing them. The fact that of the 200 people interviewed by French parliamentarians when considering the recommendation, only one of them was a Muslim woman who wore a niqab appears to support this. It’s not really about their rights, but rather about our view of their wardrobe choice.

I suspect that the true reason behind the ban and the 57% public approval rating for it in France is because the headscarf does openly signify religious and ethnic difference on the part of Muslim women. There are also cultural differences in the West that place a high premium on face-to-face communication, something that both the niqab and burqa prohibit. These were two points raised in 2006 by British MP Jack Straw, which kicked off a debate in the UK over what place the veil should have in British society. But in contrast to the high public approval for the ban in France, similar surveys in the UK found that 56% of the public would not approve of a ban except in limited situations involving security such as in airports or at passport control. The cause of this public difference is probably due to the different approaches that France and the UK take towards immigration: while France believes in assimilation towards all things French, the UK generally favors integration and multiculturalism.

Like the Swiss minaret ban, this is where the real debate over burqas and headscarves lie. Muslim women in the West are increasingly donning headscarves not just because of their belief that it is mandatory under Muslim doctrine, but because it gives them a sense of identity as a Muslim woman. Unlike in Saudi Arabia or Iran where headscarves are required by law, they are not forced to wear it but choose to of their own volition. In an integrationist society where people are expected to adapt to a certain extent but are also expected to not forgo their entire religious, ethnic, racial, or national background, this is relatively acceptable. But when immigrants and ethnic minorities are expected to assimilate and shed their backgrounds in exchange for a new national identity, such an obvious symbol of otherness like the headscarf causes major offense.

French lawmakers will probably pass the partial ban, and I won’t be surprised when new laws come up in a few years extending the ban. That is part and parcel of secular French identity. But in the future I just wish that they would be honest about the reasons for such laws rather than hide behind the nonsensical argument that prohibiting the choice is in the best interest of women and ensures their rights as an individual in a free society.

January 2nd was the National Annual Journalism Awards Day.  But for many Iranian journalists, it was just another day behind bars.  Aidan White, secretary-general of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), said at a press conference at the European Parliament in Brussels that three board members of the Association of Iranian Journalists (AoIJ) had been jailed.

Iran’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs dissolved the AoIJ in 2008. A total of 139 journalists were killed worldwide in 2009.

Drewery Dyke, a policy analyst on Iran from Amnesty International was also present. He said that arbitrary arrests are common in the country. “A knock on the door at 2 in the morning from a non-uniformed person…could mean somebody’s arrest,” he said adding that most who are detained are never heard from again.

Mr. Dyke said that the next Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is on February 15th.

The UPR is a unique process which involves a review of the human rights records of all 192 UN Member States once every four years. The UPR is a State-driven process, under the auspices of the Human Rights Council, which provides the opportunity for each State to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfil their human rights obligations.

Mr. Dyke also expressed disappointment that delegations from South Africa and Venezula refuse to discuss human rights issues in Iran with Amnesty International.  Human Rights Watch investagators have been banned since 2005 from entering the country.

The world capital of libel is London.  Not that there is a list or anything.  And people are still finding imaginative ways of making money, despite the crisis.  Take the English libel law.  Under UK libel law, a defendant is guilty until proven innocent.  Doesn’t matter if you are British or not.

“English libel law is preventing not only the media, but also medical science and research, NGOs and others from holding the powerful to account,” said John Kampfner, chief executive of free speech organisation Index on Censorship.

For example, Dr. Rachael Ehrenfed.  She is an American academic and journalist who wrote a book called Funding Evil: How Terrorism if Financed. The book was published in 2003 in New York. Twenty-three copies of her book were made available in the UK.  She, according to UK laws, was now under UK jurisdiction.

In her book, Ehrenfed made several allegations about Saudi businessman Khalid bin Mafouz.  She claimed he had connections to Al Qaeda.  Mafouz sued in London in 2005.  Ehrenfed refused to acknowledge UK jurisdication.  Normal, she wrote and published the book in the US where the US first amendment gives citizens the right to freedom of speech.  In her abscence, the UK judgment defaulted and Mafouz managed to receive almost $16,000 in damages.

Outcry. The New York State Assembly passes the Libel Terrorism Protection law in February 2008.  The legislation declares that foreign libel judgements unenforceable unless the foreign law grants the defendant the same First Amendment protections as are available in New York State.

And cases like this, in the UK, continues today.

Another striking blow to freedom of expression is the following:

A Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet was sued in London by Kaupthing, an Icelandic investment bank. The tabloid had published articles that criticized advice the company had given to wealthy clients about tax shelters.  Kaupthing managed to successfully claim UK jurisdiction because a couple of the articles were posted on the paper’s website. This meant that UK readers were able to access it.

The Danish tabloid initially refused to remove the articles but then was forced to settle out of court.  It had to pay a huge settlement fee and then had to post an apology on its website for an entire month.  Editors at the tabloid are now debating whether or not they should even translate their articles into English.

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So it comes as some relief that the UK is finally considering reforming its Libel Law.  On February 27, a panel was formed to figure out how the current law is damaging the freedom of speech.  But isn’t this already obvious?

Farmer overlooks the farm land outside Kigali, Rwanda

The Christian Science Monitor carried an interesting feature yesterday about the prospects and potential for land reform in Africa. In it correspondent Jina Moore argues that land and access to resources is at the heart of most of the continent’s conflicts; thus, fixing land issues could offer a preventative fix for a region prone to violent tensions in recent years.

It’s certainly true that land issues certainly play their role in African conflicts. Among some of the more notable examples of land-based conflict are the recent riots in Kampala and the forcible evictions of White farmers in Zimbabwe. Further afield, the post-election violence in Kenya and the wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all brought the issue of land and who controls land into the forefront of African political affairs.  With finite arable land, rising populations, and increasing pressure on resources, this potential for conflict is bound to increase in the future.

Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to sorting out the bewildering maze that often passes for property rights in African countries. This is because the Western notions of property law that came with colonization and continue to be encouraged by many international development schemes directly conflict with traditional communal views of property. Many African countries such as Sierra Leone and Botswana recognize both Western-based modern law and traditional law in their legal systems. This means that there is often not one way to determine who owns what land, even though these differing theories can give different answers to the basic question.

The lack of land security leads to tensions within communities since it can be so easy for someone else to claim or forcibly take the same land. And this is just the basic legal position; add in the corruption that is rampant in some countries like the DRC or Zimbabwe and new problems emerge.  In Kinshasa, some home owners write graffiti on the walls of their own homes with notices that the house is not for sale as a way to try and prevent duplicate deeds. In their situation, the preventative measures can count for far more than any legal remedy since the ultimate court decision is usually decided by which side gives the judge the biggest bribe.

Giving permanent land security to owners should be a top priority, but it must be done in a way that is just and fair regardless of whether it is based on traditional or modern theories of property rights.  It can also only be accomplished within a system where merit is the basis of the outcome and not money. Otherwise, land issues will continue to fuel conflict and community divisions, something that no country in the world needs more of.

A year after the Gaza War, the debate rages on about the conduct of forces on both sides during the three-week conflict. By now, major human rights organizations both in Israel and abroad have had their say in what crimes may have been committed during the war, and the UN released the results of their inquiry with the Goldstone Report. But all these reports called for more investigation. With a new year comes a renewed call for those investigations.

Starting with the Israeli response, Information Minister Yuli Edelstein stated earlier this week that Israel has no intention of setting up an independent investigation into possible crimes committed by the Israeli Defense Forces during Operation Cast Lead as requested by the UN General Assembly last year. Instead it will submit to the UN the results of their own internal government investigation on Thursday and call it good.

This response does not come as a surprise to anyone, but highlights the debate on whether any military is capable of adequately and impartially investigating itself. As a result, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi are some of the figures pushing for the establishment of a judicial panel to investigate the IDF’s internal investigation.

The panel represents a compromise between those who believe that militaries often fail when it comes to internal investigations of their own conduct and those who want an independent investigation as called for by the UN General Assembly. Of course having a government investigate its own military probably isn’t much better than just having the military do it itself. However today is not the day for that debate, though I have no doubt that if such a panel is convened, the debate will come.

Of course, Palestinians aren’t to be left out of this internal battle for accountability. As a recent article in the Jerusalem Post pointed out, while there may be a debate about the quality of Israel’s investigations, there isn’t a debate about the quantity, something that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority can say. That’s why it was big news last week when 11 Palestinian human rights groups called on Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to investigate their actions during the Gaza War. Unlike the ongoing debate about Israeli investigation, this call caught a lot of people by surprise. What isn’t surprising is that Hamas is staying mostly silent on the issue, though the Palestinian Authority announced a special commission headed by the Chief Justice of the Palestinian Supreme Court in the West Bank to fulfill the Goldstone Report’s recommendations. Since a large part of those recommendations concerned the need for inquiries into the conduct of Palestinian forces during the conflict, the move demonstrates that pressure continues on both sides.

In the meantime, there is a lot of speculation and allegations when it comes to the motive behind such calls for accountability. Edelstein, speaking ahead of his current stay in New York, called all outside reports alleging war crimes on the part of Israel, including the Goldstone Report, anti-Semitic. Some organizations, such as pro-Israel UN watchdog UN Watch, support this view. But I suspect that it has more to do with the rise in awareness about war crimes and the movement to prosecute them wherever they may occur. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has gone on for more than 60 years but the world has changed significantly in that time. With the creation of international tribunals to prosecute war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone and now with the creation of the International Criminal Court, war as usual is becoming harder to justify. And more people are bound to pay attention when the horrors of war can be watched in realtime on cable news, something that happened with Gaza but has not happened for countless others conflicts around the world. In that regard, it is basic human nature that people care and pick sides.

For now, the Gaza debates continue into 2010.  Once the February 5 deadline passes, there will be new analysis and new suggestions, all concerned with the same questions. That much is certain. What still remains unclear a year after the conflict ended is whether all this debate will result in anything other than just talk.

Antwerp, Belgium is Europe’s second largest port.  At this very moment it is, like so many other places, going through troubling times.  Unemployment is high and now,  last week, General Motors announced they will close the Opel plant which means thousands of lost jobs in this city.  But this post is not about Opel, nor GM -  it’s about solidarity.

And Haiti.  On my way back to Antwerp’s central train station I passed two children.  One playing the sax and another the trumpet.  As you can see in the photo, they are raising money for Haiti.  A small amount but nonetheless a gesture and an awareness of those in trouble and pained.

This gesture, one among thousands, spans across ideologies, across politics, and celebrates the very best of human nature.  That of generosity and solidarity, those attributes that cannot be quantified and links us all.  Attributes that challenge the notions of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations - a concept that the celebrated scholar Edward Said so eloquently took apart.  As do these two children.

Some stories never die. Human trafficking, a multibillion dollar a year global industry, seems to be one of them. In recent years, there has been a huge advocacy effort that has raised awareness on the issue, but still the trade of people as goods persists in every corner of the world.

One of the most brutal forms of this trade is sex trafficking. The psychological trauma and physical wounds that this form of human trafficking gives its victims often last a lifetime. The real cost of this trade is not normally seen on the front pages of newspapers, because it is too graphic and makes too many people uncomfortable. But as those who have survived the ordeal speak out, it is important that we listen to what they have to say in order to find a better way to stop this practice from happening in our societies.

The following video was recorded last November at the TEDIndia 2009 conference. Sunitha Krishnan, who is a survivor of rape herself, co-founded Prajwala, an organization in India that aims to rescue and rehabilitate victims of sex trafficking and ultimately end the trade altogether. Although the video includes some graphic photos and accounts of abuse, it is important to listen if we are ever to end this trade.

Yesterday Human Rights Watch released their annual World Report for 2010, detailing the state of human rights affairs around the world for the previous year. Many of the stories they focused on were also covered and editorialized here throughout 2009, from government abuses in Eritrea and Sri Lanka to increased civilian casualties in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the brutal tactics of Robert Mugabe’s army in Zimbabwe’s diamond fields. Likewise, similar to many of the observations we made in our 2009 Year in Review, the overall theme of this year’s report was the increasing crackdown on human rights activists and others, such as journalists and bloggers, who attempt to shine light on human rights abuses wherever they may occur.

I make this comparison not to boast about how smart we are here at the Foreign Policy Blogs, but because it demonstrates a clear trend that impacts the effectiveness of the human rights movement.  When many of the giants in human rights advocacy first started out, it was to highlight situations that few people were aware of and make people pay attention. But through awareness campaigns and technology, the examples above show that people are paying attention. What is still missing is that last piece of the puzzle, where words are followed with action.

The last two weeks has seen the world put together a monumental relief campaign for Haiti. From troops and medical teams being deployed to fundraising campaigns on Facebook and in local communities, and even countries offering to donate land to Haitian victims who want a new life, the fact that we are able to do so much in such a small timeframe shows that people do care about the wellbeing of people they have never met. But while we are good at reacting to major disaster, we often fail when it comes to the smaller disasters that are far more common in the world. Until we decide to put a fraction of the effort we have put into the Haiti relief efforts towards improving the quality of everyday life for millions who face human rights abuses, it is unlikely that any real change will come.

It was probably over before it even started.  As I watched Bulgaria’s minister of foreign affairs, Rumiana Jeleva, shuffle with discernible panic in her chair, any notions she had of becoming the EU’s future commissioner for humanitarian affairs came to an abrupt end.

That was last Tuesday at the European Parliament as MEPs from around Europe put her to the grind to explain financial discrepancies and ostensible hidden business portfolios.  At the very last minute, one MEP signalled her out and said that Jeleva was the current CEO of a company established by the former communist secret service in Liechtenstein.

At that conjecture, Jeleva would pause, her gaze caught in an imaginary headline until finally she would say - “I’m glad you asked that question” - something she would repeat ad hominum. Escape, panic, run! But, no.  There is no back exit from this stage.

But just as shocking were her loose understanding of world events.  And as she evaded questions with obscure answers, it became painfully obvious that this person did not have a firm understanding of what she was talking about.  A surprise given that she was a foreign minister, albeit for only three months.

Yesterday, she announced her resignation from the world of politics.  And now apparently, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. Jeleva’s naivety had no appeal here and that she would ever bargain her reputation as a serious politician without offering full disclosure, without having (could it be?) prepared for this dossier, either is a display of arrogance or sheer stupidity.