- >>
- OPINION
Is the year 2024 annus horribilis as Queen Elizabeth II described 1992? For her it was personal tragedies such as Charles and Diana separating that made her choose the adjective.
Humanity has stronger reasons to call 2024 annus horribilis.
The genocidal war by Netanyahu continues, mainly because Biden who has the means to stop it does not care for Palestinian lives and wants to continue or somnambulate with his ‘iron-clad’ support for Israel irrespective of its repeatedly brazen violations of International Law and the Charter of the United Nations.
Netanyahu has earned an arrest warrant from the ICC -International Criminal Court- but the G7 has decided to dishonor the court of which all except the U S are members. Obviously, for the West to practise double standards is second nature and its nauseatingly repeated sermon on a ‘rule-based world order’ is pure hogwash.
We do not have precise information on the grim total in Gaza. Israel bombs residential blocks, hospitals, schools, and mosques. About ten thousand are under the rubble.
The Gaza Ministry of Health has put out a figure of 45,000 dead. One wonders from where the ministry is operating as Israel would have bombed it, if it knows.
However, there are reasons to believe that the Gaza ministry’s figures are not correctand on the lower side of all unofficial estimates. Human beings die owing to lack of food, medicine, or even safe drinking water, all of which Israel has done its worst to deny to Palestinians.
Has not Israel prevented UNRWA(United Nations Relief and Work Agency) and others from taking in humanitarian relief material into Gaza and distributing them? Has not Israel killed NGO staff distributing food and those standing in line to collect it?
The U K -based Lancet came out with a figure of 186,000 dead by July 2024 taking into account all the above factors.
The latest we hear is that Netanyahu has once again succeeded in torpedoing the talks for a limited ceasefire.
The other war in Ukraine, the largest land and air war in Europe since the end of World War 2, might soon end thanks to Donald Trump. President Zelensky has come out with a series of proposals for a ceasefire based on fantasy.
Once again, we do not have correct information on the grim toll. For once, let us look at the dead and injured without looking at their passports. The Wall Street Journal, based on intelligence sources, has come out with a figure of 1 million, dead or injured.
Sudan has been in the throes of a war between two militaries- SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces) and RSF (Rapid Support Forces) since April 2023. Over 12 million Sudanese have been displaced. 24.8 million will starve without support. The Rich North is stingy, and the U N has been given only $1.6 billion against $2.7 billion needed.
Is there a retreating wave of democracy? The very election of Donald Trump who encouraged the violent mob that attacked the Congress on 6th January 2021 shows how flawed democracy is in the oldest and richest democracy.
The far-right is increasing its political clout in Europe, in Italy and the Netherlands, to list only two.
There was a rigged election for the parliament in Bangladesh in January 2024.
The military junta in Myanmar that staged a coup to overthrow the elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021 still remains in power though the area it controls has diminished.
Pakistan conducted a rigged election and Imran Khan’s party though it was the biggest party was not given a chance to form government.
On the other hand, Sri Lanka, thankfully, shows that a free and fair election can take place, and that power can be transferred peacefully.
The Security Council remains paralyzed as Washington uses its veto whenever others try to rein in Israel.
However, it is wrong to find fault with the Council per se. It is the veto wielding Permanent 5 who start wars themselves or support their proxies who start wars.
Is it not ironical that the P5 whom President Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose to be ‘global policemen’ to maintain law and order are themselves breaking the law with impunity?
India qualifies to be a permanent member on any set of criteria. Yet, India, after working jointly with Germany, Japan, and Brazil for over 20 years is no nearer.
Why? Is it because the strategy is flawed? Are not Japan and Germany un-electable as both Russia and China will oppose their election?
What is the logic in making Germany a permanent member when from that small part of the world Western Europe there are already Britain and France?
Obviously, India should do some course correction.
India seems to be re-discovering the meaning of Neighborhood First, though proclaimed in 2014. The Ministry of External Affairs should be complimented for course correction in the case of the Maldives whose newly elected President Mohamed Muizzu visited China before India even though he wanted to visit India first.
In the case of Sri Lanka the newly elected President Aruna Kumar Dissanayake made his first visit abroad to India.
There is tension, mounting tension between India and Bangladesh. It is high time the two countries appointed special representatives to meet secretly in a neutral venue and come up with a formula for de-escalating and resolving the differences.
India could think of course correction and engage diplomatically with Pakistan as the present policy of setting conditions before restoring normal diplomatic contacts has not worked.
The planet in which all life is embedded is in peril with the average rise in global temperature having exceeded by more than 1.5 degree Celsius in 2024. Was not the Baku summit in November a disappointment?
Why? Mainly for two reasons. One, the Rich North has yet to accept its historic responsibility for polluting and to respect the principle that the polluter pays. The stingy Rich North has vaguely promised to part with $300 billion a year by 2035 as contrasted with $ 1.3 trillion required. With Trump coming back as President, humanity runs the risk of sleepwalking to a series of man-made disasters.
Two, the principle of phasing out fossil fuels is getting increasingly watered down. Many small island nations in the Global South have good reasons to fear that they might disappear into water as the sea level rises.
Though the world as a whole produces more than enough to feed the current population of 8.1 billion, over 733 million went hungry in 2023.
The total food production rose by 56% since 2000 and the number of people who are obese goes on increasing and now stands at 2.3 billion.
Are we running on the spot? In the Millennium Summit (2000) held when I was Permanent Representative to F A O (Food and Agriculture Organization) the international community took a pledge to reduce by half the number of human beings going hungry by 2015. The FAO calculated that there were 852 million going hungry in 2000-2002.
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are two regions where the progress in reducing hunger has slowed down.
2025
Will 2025 be better? We do not know. In any case, it is not enough to wish for each other, whether we are heads of government/state or simple citizens. Those of us who are in democracies have the responsibility to exercise our franchise intelligently and responsible.
Unless we do that, our condition is best described by Mathew Arnold in his famous poem Dover Beach
published in 1867:
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
There was a time when war ceased for Christmas as in World War 1 when the British soldiers and their German counterparts exchanged cake and best wishes across the trenches. Going back in time, in ancient Greece they stopped the war for the Olympic games. In India in Mahabharata the fighting stopped when the sun went down.
As Homo Sapiens Sapiens it is high time, we gave peace a chance!
Ambassador K.P.Fabian retired from the Indian Foreign Service. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
Cover Photograph- Sombre Bethlehem marks Christmas with a vigil as Israel bombs Gaza. Courtesy RNZ news.
