Disappointed by Palin and need a reminder of strong, capable women?  Check out the scene in Liberia, where a group of determined women helped establish the country’s first female head of state.

Winning the Best Documentary award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and the Witness Award at this year’s Silverdocs festival, Pray the Devil Back to Hell tells the story of brave Liberian women who brought an end to the dictatorship of warlord Charles Taylor and brought an end to the civil war terrorizing their country. established peace in the country.  Silverdocs Director of Programming Sky Sitney explains, “After more than 250,000 people were killed and a million more displaced, thousands of women came together to combat the violence with a vow of peace. Men started the war, but women would end it.”

As the film’s website explains, “Thousands of women – ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts and daughters, both Christian and Muslim – came together to pray for peace and then staged a silent protest outside of the Presidential Palace.”  The women did not carry weapons – only white t-shirts which they waved while demanding a resolution to the country’s civil war.  Their protests and prayers”led to a peace agreement, the arrest of Taylor (who is awaiting trial in the International Criminal court for crimes against humanity), and culminated in the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state,” writes Sitney.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell premieres in New York on Friday November 7th at the Cinema village, 22 East 12th St.  Daily showtimes are 2 pm, 4 pm, 6 pm, 8 pm, and 10 pm.

Go to the film’s website.

Read interviews with director Gina Reticker and producer Abigail E. Disney:

Huffiington Post interview

Silverdocs interview

I feel privileged and humbled by my day yesterday representing alldaybuffet at the Global Philanthropy Forum in Redwood City, CA. The Global Philanthropy Forum, or “GPF,” is a gathering of 500 philanthropists, social investors, and social entrepreneurs who convene to learn about current trends in global affairs and philanthropy, to exchange ideas, and to collaborate in addressing some of the world’s greatest challenges.

This year GPF focused on “Human Security, Human Rights, and the Shared Responsibility to Protect: A Conversation with Elders and Emerging Leaders.” I’m using the ADB blog forum to bring this important conversation back to the next generation of leaders, you guys, and ask you all some questions, share some ideas, and provide inspiration on how we, as a group of young individuals, can contribute to solving some of the greatest challenges we’ll face in the 21st Century.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be submitting a series of short pieces that will range from the substantive themes covered at the conference, current trends and questions about the direction of philanthropy, inspiring projects and stories of individual social entrepreneurs who participated in the gathering, and some ideas of my own. My hope is to bring you all into this conversation and solicit your feedback on how our community can get involved.

Issue #1:

It seems appropriate, for my first in this series of posts, to elaborate on the theme of this year’s conference: Human Security, Human Rights, and the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P). Let’s start with some definitions (with a little help from Wikipedia):

The Responsibility to Protect:
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a recently developed concept in international relations that represents a major turning point away from the primacy of state sovereignty over its internal affairs when there is evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, or other heinous crimes against civilians. The principles of R2P state that if a particular state is unwilling or unable to carry out its responsibility to prevent such abuses, that responsibility must be transferred to the international community, which must attempt to solve problems initially via peaceful means (such as diplomatic pressure, dialogue, even sanctions) and then, as a last resort, through the use of military force.

While the R2P doctrine is still being debated in some circles that fear international intervention in the affairs of sovereign nations, it has won growing support from both government actors and especially, civil society advocates. The Doctrine represents a clear turning point in the development of international humanitarian law and affairs.

Human Security:
Human security refers to an emerging paradigm for understanding global vulnerabilities. It challenges the traditional notion of national security by arguing that the proper referent for security should be the individual rather than the state. It looks into the factors that give rise to instability and incorporates diverse approaches to understanding forces leading to instability and promotes comprehensive solutions to promote long-term peace and security. Human security holds that a people-centered view of security is necessary for national, regional and global stability.

Interestingly, the concept emerged from a post-Cold War, multi-disciplinary understanding of security involving a number of research fields, including development studies, international relations, strategic studies, and human rights. During the cold war, security studies and policy looked at interactions between states and traditional government militarism. In a changing world where security threats come from state as well as non-state actors and where internal conflicts within countries are on the rise, a new paradigm for understanding peace and security is needed.

Human Rights:

Human Rights refer to the “basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled” and a “…recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world ”. Examples of rights and freedoms which are often thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, declaration was the first international legal effort to limit the behavior of states and press upon them duties to their citizens following the model of the rights-duty duality. The UDHR is now considered to be a central component of international customary law.

That said, here are some questions for you:
• What’s our role in promoting these concepts as young adults, primarily living in the United States or other parts of the “West”?
• Why do we as a community care to promote these principles?
• How can individuals contribute to such vast global agendas?
• Do we agree that we have a responsibility to protect civilians from genocide, conflict, and war crimes?
• How can we, as individuals, or perhaps young professionals outside of the international policy and law community, still contribute to promoting the objectives of human rights, human security, and protection of civilians?

Weighty? Well we’d like you to weigh in, respond, share ideas, concerns, and questions. I’ll be elaborating on these concepts in the coming days and how people across the world are creatively promoting the ideas enshrined in R2P, UDHR, and Human Security to make the world a more peaceful, just, and safe place for us and future generations.

Be back soon!

I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the matter of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad.–Gerald Holtom

Symbols can hold a lot of meanings and evolve just as quickly as an era. None quite exemplify this better than the peace sign. The symbol that served as a brand for several movements recently turned 50, in which time its significance has changed as much as the change it has inspired. The BBC recently wrote a piece on its inception and its evolution into and as one of the most widely known symbols in the world.

The sign was originally created for the CDN (campaign for nuclear disarmament) by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and graduate of the London Royal College. It was to be the a badge of the ’direct action committee against nuclear war’ and used for the first demonstration against aldermaston (a British research center for the development of nuclear weapons) in 1958.

From design boom

from a design point of view, it is interesting to note that the original sketches are preserved at the school of peace studies, at the bradford university. they show a symbol that stood for ‘the death of man and the unborn child’ and that symbol was designed from the naval code of semaphore – the code letters for N and D (nuclear disarmament). N is two flags, arms downstretched at a forty-five degree angle, and D is two flags, one arm straight up and one straight down. the ends of the ‘arms’ and ‘legs’ thicken and splay out noticeably as they approach the circumference. the circle itself was thick – the thickening itself has two versions: in one, all the straight strokes are thickened; in the other, only those in the lower half of the circle. it is said, that the reason for the symbol being upside down (D over N) is that semaphore is a military code and upside down symbolizes ‘anti-military’.

The symbol has been associated with everything from Martin Luther King’s movement, to satanic inverted cross and communist leanings (which may have been less of an issue if Holtom when with his original idea of a Christian cross symbol within a circle motif). It’s been carried as a banner of peace by anti-Vietnam protesters and seen as’ the footprint of the great American chicken’ by the soldiers abroad. Some have even gone so far as to compared it to the runic letter death and to use it in products and fashion.

The real power of the sign, its supporters say, is the reaction that it provokes – both from fans and from detractors. But to its credit, its simplicity allows anyone to drum up this reaction with a few quick strokes (important in places with not so free expression).

But the designer’s revelations are always telling. According to the BBC

American pacifist Ken Kolsbun, who corresponded with Mr Holtom until his death in 1985, says the designer came to regret the connotation of despair and had wanted the sign inverted.
“He thought peace was something that should be celebrated,” says Mr Kolsbun, who has spent decades documenting the use of the sign. “In fact, the semaphore sign for U in ‘unilateral’ depicts flags pointing upwards. Mr Holtom was all for unilateral disarmament.”

It’s never been copyrighted, so it’s free to all (for better or for worse), as is its meaning and significance. All they ask is that commercial users to make a donation which will go to education and the information work.

The symbol is still recognized in GB as the logo for nuclear disarmament, but is known worldwide for peace and non-violence. But it’s the democratic and collective use of the symbol that has and will continue to make or break or change or do away with it all together.