Saturday, January 10, 2009

Unjust Peace will happen after the crisis

I was lucky to have had a tutorial session in the morning for my Public International Law class where Zaimah raised some very good points on the UN Security Council & General Assembly during her presentation. It was a moo point in the tutorial to discuss whether or not there is International Law (IL), as IL has been effective in situations where it's easy to get a consensus on issues like health and pirates. It's effective when states ratify and adhere to it. The question is ; What if states does not ratify it, and even if they ratify it, can they still get around it somehow? Political clout and will is half of international law and unfortunately, if you're one of the Big 5, you can  get away with anything. Therefore, is it really 'law' in this instance when the rule of law has been undermined ; when you can be selective in the application as to what laws you want to impose and the parties to whom the law should be imposed upon.

An extension to the day, I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Chandra Muzaffar this evening, when he was there in IIU to give a talk on Gaza : International Response. He suggested proudly that JUST Malaysia and some other counterparts will work very hard to establish a tribunal - to trial the injustices done by Israel in the recent Gaza event. As much as I applaud the initiative to do something about it ; we can't escape the question of "what's next?". Even if you can establish the wrongdoings (somehow you can get get Israel to co-operate in this?), WHAT'S NEXT? Forwarding such ideas must have an end result, and objective. What will JUST achieve from this?

If one thing that I appreciate from the talk is noticing the similarities of my view pertaining to the recent issue with his, and it's good for him to spread the message around especially in IIU, where some people just don't want to listen to the other side of the story. What's happening right now does not only concerns Muslims and Jews, the injustice done by the Israeli Government and it's system is one that affects us all - regardless of what religion you're from, or even if you don't believe in a religion. It is a humanitarian crisis, and this is the aspect that we need to look into if we want to make this fight more inclusive to others. And not see it as a personal struggle of religions that wouldn't bring a step further to peace.

2 comments:

Wanee said...

yeah...whats next??? good point
what can be achieved,whats the endgame

Nabster said...

I agree that it shouldn't be a question of religion, it's def a humanitarian crisis, as it is a personal right.