Clegg, conference and climate change

Jonathan Porritt's blog points out the worrying fact (and one that I have not seen mentioned in other analyses) that Nick Clegg's speech to the Lib Dem party conference did not mention climate change. Not once.

I haven’t done my homework, but my hunch is that this is the first Conference speech from a major Party Leader that will have completely ignored climate change in recent times. Ever since Tony Blair used his conference speech as Prime Minister in 1997, to raise the whole profile of climate negotiations, it’s been up there as a ‘must mention’ by all Party Leaders – however superficial and meaningless some of those mentions may have been.

I rather doubt David Cameron, let alone the new Labour Leader will make such a fundamental error.

Amnesty on burqa bans

Following my previous post on burqa bans, it caught my attention that Amnesty International has urged the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina to reject a draft law that would ban "the wearing in public of clothes which prevent identification" - including full-face veils.

I wasn't aware of AI's position on this previously; their statement is worth reading in full.

'Honour' killings

The Independent has, to its immense credit, had a series of excellent articles focusing on so-called 'honour' killings recently, mostly the work of Robert Fisk.

It's all worth a read, but here is his conclusion.

His views on what 'we' can do are somewhat dispiriting:

[T]he grim truth is that Westerners can no more change this – can no more persuade village elders in Afghanistan of the benefits of gender equality and an end to "honour" killings – than we could have persuaded Henry VIII of the benefits of parliamentary democracy or Cromwell of the laws of war. The height of such pomposity came the other day from Navi Pillay, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights. "Violent 'honour' attacks," she pontificated, "are crimes that violate the right to life, liberty, bodily integrity, the prohibition against torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, the prohibition on slavery, the right to freedom from gender-based discrimination and sexual abuse or exploitation, the right to privacy, the obligation to denounce discriminatory laws and harmful practices against women." Phew. I can see how they'll be shaking in their shoes after that in Baluchistan and Helmand province. 

I agree to an extent, although I do think that 'outsiders' can play an important role in supporting (financially, politically, logistically) those brave 'insiders' who are trying to foment change.