My Blog

The United Nations

brandigee — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:01:24 +0000

The United Nations was created in hopes of preventing conflict, or to maintain peace throughout the world. They are responsible for establishing many programs with the intentions of minimizing conflict and focusing on areas such as world poverty and hunger, economic and social development, and human rights. The United Nations ensure the protection of rights in many ways, here are a few:

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights raises concerns with governments, responds to human rights abuses and takes action to prevent violations.

The UN Secretary-General and the High Commissioner confidentially voice human rights concerns with governments on various human rights situations and issues, including the treatment of prisoners and the commutation of death sentences.

Under certain UN human rights treaties, individuals can appeal against States for alleged violations of their rights, subject to the fulfillment of certain preconditions, including the exhaustion of all domestic remedies.

On 15 March 2006, the General Assembly created a Human Rights Council to replace the former UN Commission on Human Rights. The new body, crafted with the aim of improving the effectiveness and raising the status of the United human rights machinery, will report directly to the Assembly. (See box, Human Rights Council.)

The United Nations i believe, is a big waste of money. They talk a lot but never get anything done, and if they did, don’t you think the wars in the middle East would have been stopped by them (just an example) ? They may provide a little bit of assistance to countries in need of emergency stabilization, but even then they have no long term effect. However, it is easy to look the other way as well, seeing as how conflicts now as opposed to about 60 years prior have dropped drastically (inter-state conflicts). I do feel the United Nations could still be doing a better job, it seems as though they just spend a lot of money, and have no credibility for anything really.

REFERENCES:

http://www.un.org/geninfo/ir/index.asp?id=140#q1

It’s not about what you look like, it’s about who you are!

brandigee — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:43:58 +0000

For anyone who it may be unclear to, I will start off with the definition of Gender identity disorder. “Gender identity disorder is a conflict between a person’s actual physical gender and the one they actually identify him or herself as. For example, a person identified as a boy may actually feel and act like a girl.” Boys with this disorder frequently play with girls, and enjoy girls as playmates. They tend to dress in girls clothes ( ie; dresses, skirts ), and often like to act as a female figure. Girls with gender identity disorder prefer boy playmates and often enjoy rough play. They want to wear boys’ clothes, and look like boys as well. These girls do not look forward to hitting puberty ( like menstruating or growing breasts ), but rather want to grow a penis. I have found a good example of what I had just explained about gender identity disorder in an article about a very young “boy”. This disorder can be evident in early childhood. Most people know whether they have a gender identity problem by the time they reach adolescence. Personally, I don’t think these gender roles we have in society are good, I believe people should be who ever they feel they are, without parents and others telling boys they don’t cry and girls that they need to be ladylike. After all, we all have feelings, so why cant they affect us in the same way (for example, boys being emotional ).

References: http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/001527.htm

CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE

Equal or not? You decide.

brandigee — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:39:45 +0000

It is not hard to tell by looking at the province statistics that not all groups, specifically Aboriginals, have a fair chance at success within the school system. The numbers for Aboriginals eligible to graduate is scarcely low, and year-to-year it is just slowly increasing. I strongly believe high drop out rates and lower graduation rates can relate back mainly to the fact of parents being put in residential schools when they were younger. The aim of the residential schools were to take the First Nations children out of their home, and put them in these schools to learn English and adopt Christianity and Canadian customs. Ideally, they would pass their adopted lifestyle on to their children, and native traditions would diminish, or be completely abolished in a few generations. Students were discouraged from speaking their first language or practicing native traditions. If they were caught, they would experience severe punishment. These children lived in substandard conditions and endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. As a result, these First Nations parents are non trusting of public schools for fear of what had happened to them. Another issue for high drop out rates of Aboriginals could be money. If you do not have a high enough income it is hard to survive, therefore these children may be forced to drop out of school and get jobs in order to help their family.

I found a very informational website you may want to read. It goes well with the questions to be answered in this blog assignment.

http://www.nationtalk.ca/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10517

Click here for statistics

The Highway of Tears

brandigee — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:11:07 +0000

“A young girl stands beside Highway 16 with her arm and thumb raised high. A car or truck pulls over, she hops in for a ride, never to be seen alive again. For more than a decade, young women have disappeared or have been found slain along Highway 16 in northern BC. A disturbing pattern of disappearances was first noticed between 1988 and 1995. Young girls mostly aboriginal in origin and aged 15 to their early twenties vanished after being seen hitchhiking along the highway.”

I believe this case had not reached the media for a couple reasons, one being because they were in fact Aboriginal. However, two major reasons I believe is because of the lack of evidence they had on this case, and to keep it on the down low from the rest of the population. Of course many people would take this route, it is a highway, but bringing it to the people’s attention that are around this place would scare them from it. These girls were taken and killed after hitchhiking down this road, ( as it says in the quote ) so it is a possibility that no one knew they were missing for a while, thinking they were at the destination they were headed. Although, if it was lets say a white person who had gone missing, I think we would have been more likely to hear about it rather than if it was an aboriginal, therefore it does show some inequality when comparing it with other similar happenings.

I found this article that is fairly recent, Aug 28, 2009. You may want to read some of the comments as well, they are also quite interesting.

CLICK HERE

With all the articles that are recent concerning this case, it seems as though the media is keeping people up-to-date on this topic.

(Sorry guys, I lost the website that went along with the first quote, oops!!)

Racism and Civil Rights – Homer Plessy

brandigee — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:45:42 +0000

Homer Plessy was arrested in 1892 for sitting in a car on a train that required only whites. He violated an 1890 state law ( the separate car law ) that required that passengers on Louisiana trains be segregated by race. Plessy’s arrest was an orchestrated event; he was chosen to be the subject of a legal challenge to the segregation laws because he was of mixed race. After arguing that the “separate but equal” law violated the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments he was still found guilty and later in 1896 the case was brought all the way to the U.S. supreme court which upheld the legality of Judge Ferguson’s ruling by an 8-1 majority. Plessy did not win his case, and he was put in jail, yet the impact of his case was huge. It made others believe that it was right to require blacks and whites to have separate things ( restaurants, theaters ect. ) as long as they were equal. It took 64 years before the separate but equal law was finally ruled against. It was ruled that separate was not equal in the public school system and was illegal to require blacks and whites to go to separate schools.

Childrens Rights

brandigee — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:44:46 +0000

I strongly believe that children need special protection because they are among the most vulnerable members of society. They are dependent on others like their parents and families for care and protection, or the country/state when these fail. As a result we have made children’s rights a priority, and have stated that the best interests of a child are the overriding concern when it comes to any matter affecting him/her.

Now I found this section on a website which shows what children have the right to, and it states…

Every child has the right to -
1. a name and a nationality from birth;
2. family care or parental care, or to appropriate alternative care when removed from the family environment;
3. basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services;
4. be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse or degradation;
5. be protected from exploitative labour practices
6. not be required or permitted to perform work or provide services that -
  1. are inappropriate for a person of that child’s age; or
  2. place at risk the child’s well-being, education, physical or mental health or spiritual, moral or social development;
7. not be detained except as a measure of last resort, in which case, in addition to the rights a child enjoys under sections 12 and 35, the child may be detained only for the shortest appropriate period of time, and has the right to be -
  1. kept separately from detained persons over the age of 18 years; and
  2. is treated in a manner, and kept in conditions, that take account of the child’s age;
8. have a legal practitioner assigned to the child by the state, and at state expense, in civil proceedings affecting the child, if substantial injustice would otherwise result; and
9. not be used directly in armed conflict, and to be protected in times of armed conflict.
A child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child.
In this section ‘child’ means a person under the age of 18 years.

This section gives children the right to citizenship and some form of care. Children need food and shelter, and should be protected from abuse, neglect and degradation. No child should work when under-age, or do work that would interfere with his or her education or development. Seeing as how these are the rights of a child, I believe we all need to abide by them no matter where you are from in the world. I think we should educate these children that have there rights constantly being violated, and maybe if they took a stand for their rights it would be more effective in other people eyes.

UNICEF is a really good website to go to for more information on how they help children and it may provide you with some ideas on how you could also help.

Click Here

Human Rights Violations – Angola, Africa

brandigee — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:56:20 +0000

When i read the article on Angola from the website provided to us, I saw only a few human rights violations mentioned in the text, so i thought i would research further to see in fact how many more i could find. I came across a list naming many of the Human rights abuse such as: the abridgment of citizens’ right to elect officials at all levels; unlawful killings by police, military, and private security forces; torture, beatings, and harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; corruption and impunity; arbitrary arrest and detention; an inefficient and overburdened judicial system; lengthy pretrial detention; lack of due process; restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, including self-censorship, and assembly; forced evictions without compensation; and discrimination and domestic violence and abuse against women and children. Then to find they were also trying to place bans against Human rights groups ( people defending human rights), and civil society in Angola and internationally had to call on their government, the EU and other international bodies to protect these human rights defenders in the country. Now although all of these violations of Human rights are horrible, the two that really struck me were, “forced evictions without compensation, and discrimination and domestic violence and abuse against women and children“. The government should notice this is wrong and support these people who group up to become the Human rights defenders, it may be a good place to start so in the future the people of Angola can have a peaceful life.

Critical Consciousness

brandigee — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:27:35 +0000

The concept of critical consciousness is tha ability to perceive social, political, and economic oppression and to take action against the oppressive elements of society (as defined by Paulo Freire). Freire definitely had made a number of important theoretical innovations that have had an impact on the development of educational practice. For example when he helped third world peoples gain an awareness of worldly matters while he had taught them to read. I believe it’s important to gain a critical awareness in the developed world and undeveloped world within individuals because we can then avoid all the oppressive acts in society and not be so blind towards the issues most of us don’t see. However, this is easier in developed worlds because of all the distractions with new technology and the fact that they are “must haves” by us nowadays makes it even worse.

Different People, Different Perspectives.

brandigee — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:57:19 +0000

With the 2010 Olympics coming to Vancouver, it brings a lot of new people from around the world and creates a lot of new construction going on of places Vancouver , and around Vancouver. All these changes for an event that wont last long, and not only that, but it costs a lot of money for the Olympics to come here, and they are already over the expected budget. Although the bad seems as though it outweighs the good because of things like money issues for tax payers who are actually paying for these Olympics, and the fact that it takes the Olympics to “clean up the streets”, it’s not entirely true (or so we are made to believe!). The security used for the Olympics will be very beneficial for the violence, and even after the Olympics they talked about using this “harsher” security for policing after the Olympics.

Perspective number 1, the privileged: I believe the privileged people, would be the ticket buyers, especially the ones who come from all over the world to stay and see these games. I was browsing the ticket prices for the Olympics and was shocked to see that opening ceremony was $1,000, the closing ceremony was $775, and just the normal games ranged from anywhere to $100-600. To think about adding on the additional hotels or condos costs that are rented out for this time it blew me away thinking people can actually afford to do this and yet still be financially stable.

Perspective number 2, the oppressed: The oppressed in this case, would be the residents living near the 2010 Olympic Winter games. These people are being pushed out of their homes so there is more room to rent out for people staying for the Olympics, and even construction workers that are building near it. I read this article that i have posted below and it was appalling to hear what these people have to go through because of this huge event, even if they aren’t going to it. Again this is an example of people who will do anything for money, and if these landlords or hotel owners had cared for these people safety they wouldn’t even of had the thought cross their minds. It’s sad when these tenants have to pay for this when they weren’t even a part of it to begin with.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/09/04/bc-vancouver-downtown-eastside-olympics-eviction-claim.html

Social Justice Concept – Race Discrimination

brandigee — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:12:57 +0000

The concept topic i chose to research is race discrimination. While researching articles for this topic, I came across a very interesting one about two places( Georgia, and Russia, with Abkhazian people separating the two) that had a lot of tension raised between them, yet it got worse as a result of race discrimination. Tha Abkhazian authorities were supposed to prohibit teaching the Georgian language in district schools even though the teaching was in Russian already. Moreover, they were supposed to prohibit it because Georgia was being ” an unfriendly state for Abkhazia”. Their excuse was ” Russians’ ultimate objective is expulsion of remaining Georgians from conflict areas”, which they then imposed new textbooks in Russian for these Abkhazian people even though it had stated that Russian textbooks were very scarce and claimed the Georgian historical facts were falsified. They then came up with an even “better” plan to raise the salaries of the teachers in these schools to almost double just to accomodate Russia, which i believe is ridiculous. All that just to keep the teachers from raising a stink per se, yet we do know peoples minds when it comes to money, the same as it had been before and forever will be, people do anything for money, or in this case, don’t do anything, like have a voice of their own.

Click Here For The Link.

http://www.georgiatimes.info/en/articles/6589.html

I beleive our biases affect the way we see Social Justice a lot. Not everybody thinks the same, we do have our own biases, and because of this, some will try to obtain justice in some situations they agree needs justice, and others will think in an unjust manner because of their own experiences, what the media has put in their head or from family and friends. This varies from place to place, religion to religion and person to person, but i see our biases as what makes people interesting to see their outlook on things. I do think it is important to know our biases, seeing as how we all have them, and we can discuss these biases with others aswell.