From: People For Peace
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News
REVIEWED BY JOSEPH ADERO NGALA
AUTHOR-MARYANN CUSIMANO LOVE
NAIROBI-KENYA
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012
The years 2002 has been something of a revival of interest in Africa, at least in official circles in Britain. After roughly two decades during which Africa fate-the odd famine or natural disaster aside-was largely relegated to the bottom of white halls in tray, the issue has now found itself towards the top.
As a journalist who has covered Africa for three decades l do understand the implications and my role of reporting human tragedies- without rhetoric or rancor. Beyond Sovereignty issue for Global agenda has mixed political insight with personal testimony to create a powerful book-compelling.
In Africa politicians like to talk vaguely about global village, but if foreign policy is to be ethical as well as effective, it will have to recognize that conflict resolution entails more than getting two sides around a table in Africa, there has to be an acknowledgment that although African are primarily to blame for the decrepit state of their continent, the rich world has to shoulder its share of the blame.
In the decades since decolonization, Africa has been ill-served by those who claimed to be friends- too often policy has been driven by a competition between various powerful nations over the continents vast resources. We have argued for free trade what we really meant was that to restrict their export to us.
Instead of extending the ideas of social justice that we take for granted, we have all too often, allowed our companies to deny Africans those very standards; how fair is it that a cocoa farmer in Ghana should get less than one penny from the proceeds of a bar of chocolate that sells for 90pence in Britain? Why did it take a court battle in South Africa in 2001 to pursue, the great pharmaceutical business that some people simply couldn’t afford their AIDS drugs
In the aftermath of September 11 people were fond of saying that the ’world has changed’ that life would never be the same again. What they meant, of course, was that life in the rich world, and especially in America, had changed.
In the poor world nothing much had changed at all-except that many more of their citizens seen as potential terrorists. Very quickly, Somali found itself on the list of those deemed to pose a threat to Americans security-this is the country that USA backed in the cold war and then tried to save from famine in 1992.
The point is this; the world should change after September 11, but not simply in the way people suggested at the time of the attacks. if leaders like from UK prime minister remain true to their words, then over the next forty years Africa might well look very different from the way l have had to portray it during the last fifty years.
My intention was to review a well documented book by Maryann Cusimano Love Beyond Sovereignty issues for Global Agenda is a book that one must have it well written it articulates views from different scholars and its has also paid special attention to the works of Jesuits refugees and its has many ideas.
She addressed heavy issues on the global economic meltdown, terrorist attacks, environmental problems, disease pandemics, refugee flows, drug and human trafficking, resurgent religion, cyberattacks, weapons of mass destruction-the news headlines and policy makers are consumed these pressing global concerns.
But none of these she writers is important global issues are captured by the traditional view of international relations as the activities of state. People are dying, but states cannot save them. She also maintains in the book that the strongest states in the system cannot solve these failed these problems alone; their institutions are not wired for it, and they are scrambling to come up with effective responses.
Maryann Cusimano Love maintains in the book that a third of the people on the planet live in the weakest states in the system. These failed and falling states as she puts it cannot provide roads and drinking water, basic law, order, and governance.
The citizens are the most vulnerable, yet these states are what she calls kleptrocract leaders that treat the government as ATM Machines used for personal enrichment. Half the people in the planet live without freedoms (in both “strong and ‘week “states) their governments deny them the abilities to hold their government accountable for the activities undertaken in their name.
The worst of these states are predatory, deliberately killing the very citizens they are supposed to protect. Sovereignty-the ideas that governance aligns with territory, and that those outside the geographic boundaries have no authority to meddle in internal affairs-is not neutral or theoretical or theoretical or helpful for most of the people on the planet.
For example, nearly 6 million people have died in the Congo, as many Jews as died in the holocaust, in a conflict driven by failed sovereignty, the quest to control natural resources to sell to the lucrative global market.
Dr. Maryann Cusimano Love is a tenured Associate Professor of International Relations in the Politics Department of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. She is on the Core Group for the Department of State’s working group on Religion and Foreign Policy, charged with making recommendations to the Secretary of State and the Federal Advisory Commission on how the US government can better engage with civil society and religious actors in foreign policy.
She served as a Fellow at the Commission on International Religious Freedom, where she is working with the Foreign Service Institute in creating new training and education materials on religion and foreign policy. ,
She teaches graduate and undergraduate International Relations courses at Catholic University and the Pentagon, such as Security, Peace Studies, Just Peace, U.S. Foreign Policy, Terrorism, Globalization, and The Problem of Sovereignty.
Her recent International Relations books include Beyond Sovereignty: Issues for a Global Agenda (4th Edition, 2011), Morality Matters: Ethics and the War on Terrorism (forthcoming at Cornell University Press), “What Kind of Peace Do We Seek?” a book chapter on Peacebuilding, in Notre Dame University’s volume on The Ethics and Theology of Peacebuilding (Orbis 2011), “The Church and Global Governance” chapter for a Vatican book volume on Pacem in Terris, and “Women, Religion, and Peace” chapter for a U.S. Institute of Peace book Exploring the Invisible.
She serves on: the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ International Justice and Peace Committee, where she advises the bishops on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy, and engages in advocacy with the U.S. government; the Advisory Board of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, a network of practitioners, academics, clergy, and laity from around the world in the field of Catholic Peacebuilding; the board and Communications Committee of Jesuit Refugee Services, an international refugee relief and advocacy group active in over 60 countries.
An alumna of the Johns Hopkins University (PhD), the University of Texas at Austin (MA), and St. Joseph’s University in Philadelpha (BA), Dr Cusimano Love is a frequent speaker on international affairs issues, as when she spoke on Religious Peacebuilding at the Vatican and at the United Nations.
She is a columnist for America magazine and a recipient of the 2009 Best Columnist Catholic Press Award. As a former Pew Faculty Fellow and a current consultant for Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Dr. Love regularly gives faculty development workshops on religion and world politics, and case and participatory teaching techniques.
Dr. Maryann Cusimano Love lives on the Chesapeake Bay outside of Washington, DC, with her husband Richard and three young children, Maria, Ricky, and Ava, who inspired her New York Times best-selling children’s books, You Are My I Love You, You Are My Miracle, You Are My Wish, You Are My Wonders, and Sleep, Baby, Sleep.
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