ANNOUNCEMENT: Blog moving

Hello to you all,

Thank you so much for following our blog over the years. We are pleased to announce that our blog will now be housed on our main website. You can view it here: http://www.worldpittsburgh.org/ under News–>Council Blog.

Thank you again for all your continued support and we look forward to engaging with you on future posts!

Report from the Field – Sport for Development in Cameroon, Africa

Justin Forzano is the founder and CEO of Cameroon Football Development Program (CFDP). He started the initiative to improve the lives of youth in Cameroon with the game of soccer. Because so many youth lack the resources and opportunity to succeed in such a challenging environment, CFDP aims to shine a spotlight on the potential for youth as future leaders and capacitate them with the skills they need to overcome the significant barriers of living in a developing country. To date, CFDP has worked with thousands of boys and girls in the Southwest Region of Cameroon.

I arrived in Douala, Cameroon around half past midnight. Inside the airport, perpetually under construction, I followed the fluorescent lights which guide weary travelers through a maze of control stations: the now-defunct Ebola screening station, a Yellow Fever checkpoint, the Police Control for visas, and finally into the main hall where the conveyor belt might just spit out all of your luggage if you are lucky. I was fortunate that both of my bags made it all the way from Pittsburgh after stops in DC and Brussels. Finally, I was back in my second home!

The car we hired flew through the darkness of the city without street lamps. It was only when we reach Rue de la Joie, or ‘street of joy’, did a few places shine light for us to see that roasted fish was still available. We shared a meal together and then made our way back to the home of my very good friend and brother, Epulle Ernest, better known as “Biggie” for the size of his muscles and his heart.

Up with the sun, we ventured to a local pitch to get in an early game of football (soccer) before the official start of the working day. Upon arrival at the field, we met a team of young adults who train there every morning. The team does not participate in any organized football competition – if you could call any football in Cameroon organized – aside from the occasional summer holiday tournament. The team does not have sponsorship nor do they play on a quality field. They lack quality equipment, playing with a busted ball the morning I met them at the field and wearing some faded, Chinese-made replica jerseys. But they are united. They know each other’s style of play on the field and support one another off the field. They represent the neighborhood. They give back to their community. Every Sunday morning they play 90+ minutes and then spend the next few hours in association-style meetings which sometimes continue into the afternoon. They sing club songs and traditional chants and share plenty bottles of mimbo (drinks) together. They represent the power of football in a country like Cameroon.

Later that afternoon, Biggie and I traveled to Kumba where the Cameroon Football Development Program, an organization I started back in 2010 after spending three summers in country with the University of Dayton School of Engineering, is based. We were met with a warm welcome from the local management team who oversees programs in 14 secondary schools and three community-based youth football leagues in as many different towns in the Southwest and Northwest Regions. It was there I delivered the news to some members of the team: we have been awarded a FIFA Football for Hope grant to support our league expansion in 2015!

FIFA awarded this grant to support our innovative approach to integrating life skills, leadership and health education into competition. We call this our youth enrichment football league; where every season has a social/health theme and every match has a topic. We infuse the education right into the match procedures, so players and coaches learn and share information about important issues critical to the development of the whole community in the most engaging forum: a football game.

Over the next two weeks, I worked with my team to strategize the best approach to our expansion. We discussed the importance of balance between school programs, a new leadership initiative led by our in-house Peace Corps Volunteer, our girls programs, and this our FIFA-endorsed league expansion. We assigned responsibilities. Kama and Wallace would take care of all things concerning the league. Killian would manage the school programs and oversee distribution of thousands of pieces of soccer equipment donated by the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, City of Pittsburgh CitiParks Big League Sports, Avonworth High School Girls Soccer Team, and the dozens of other clubs who supported us in our last equipment drive. Nenne will continue in her role as communications director – making sure equipment donors in Pittsburgh know who receives their old jerseys and cleats. Caroline will collect the ever-so-important data to track our progress with monitoring and evaluation. Ashu manages the finances while Collins oversees the whole operation. The plan was set and my job was done… at least until Monday when I returned to Pittsburgh.

On Saturday, we headed to the beautiful beaches of the Atlantic in the coastal town of Limbe. Upon arrival, we quickly joined a few strangers in a thrilling game of beach soccer before going for a swim and then heading back to the airport. The work was not over, but had merely just begun.

A week later, the Kumba community league kicked off it’s first-ever full season for under 14 boys. Six teams will compete in the season which runs into May. The theme is Gender Equality and the players and coaches have already begun to sensitize the community about the role of boys and men in promoting a more just and equitable society for girls and women.

Members of the Pittsburgh community are invited to get involved and become supporters of Cameroon Football Development Program (CFDP). Connect with a local nonprofit organization creating global impact, by visiting our website (www.cameroonfdp.org), signing up for the newsletter (www.cameroonfdp.org/get-the-newsletter) and following along on social media.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/theCFDP

Twitter: www.twitter.com/CameroonFDP

Civil Liberties: A Privilege, Not a Right? A look at the flexibility of human rights in security issues

Source: American Constitution Society for Law and Policy

Last week the U.S. Senate released a controversial report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture in the interrogation of terrorists and suspected terrorists. The report argues that torture is ineffective as an interrogation technique and is therefore unjustified. The CIA promptly countered the criticism with a media blitz. Former intelligence officers and officials launched the website CIAsavedlives.com maintaining that their actions prevented terrorist attacks, preserved U.S. national security, and protected the lives of Americans at home and abroad. Perhaps what is the least controversial about the report is what is being investigated. The Senate report questions the efficacy of the use of torture in interrogations; not the ethics. Though some argue that publishing the report is harmful to national security, the silver lining is that it sparked discussions on an important subject: the delicate balance of civil liberties in issues of national security.

In democracies, the protection of individual rights take priority over the protection of society as a whole—in the post-9/11 world, this tends to clash with national security policies. The government has an obligation is to keep its citizens safe, which is easier to accomplish by using tactics that violate constitutional rights. Furthermore, since intelligence operations and interrogations are classified, the public will never know if the ends truly justify the means. The U.S. frequently faces criticism from the international community for using interrogation tactics that blatantly violate principles of American democracy. These criticisms strike a chord with U.S. foreign policy makers because it contradicts the American principles which they preach to both our allies and our foes. However, this isn’t an issue that is unique to the U.S.—many other countries have also struggled to balance individual rights with the protection of society.

Cuba

Although there aren’t many that expect Cuba to spearhead international civil rights initiatives, their response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic does little to respect patients’ rights. Under the current policy, testing for HIV/AIDS is mandatory and, if infected, patients are placed in a state-run sanitarium for a period no less than 6-8 weeks. In the sanitariums, patients receive education about the disease, transmission, prevention, and how to live a healthy live while infected. Patients still have the expectation of privacy and those that are employed are still entitled to receive their regular pay while being treated. After the mandatory term of six to eight weeks, patients can either stay in the sanitarium indefinitely or they can go back home and resume their lives as they were prior to their diagnoses. Notwithstanding the obvious ethical dilemmas this policy poses, it is extremely effective. Among sexually active adults in Cuba, the rate of HIV/AIDS transmission is 0.1%.

Liberia

As the country hit the hardest by the Ebola virus, Liberia has struggled to balance public health with civil liberties in its efforts to stop the pandemic. This is especially challenging for Liberia because of its weak governance, poor infrastructure, and a virtually nonexistent healthcare system due to a series of prolonged and destructive civil wars that occurred from the late 1980s to about 2004. The United Nations maintains a force of approximately 15,000 peace keeping troops in Liberia constituting one of its largest peacekeeping operations.

Instability and conflict have been part of life for Liberia for nearly 3 decades, so when the new threat to security was biological, the leadership was unprepared to implement countermeasures. Once the pandemic advanced beyond management, Liberian leadership enacted strict quarantines for Ebola patients in an effort to get ahead of its advance. The quarantines were mismanaged, with patients not receiving the care they needed or being allowed to leave. There were even reports of people under quarantine that were not diagnosed with Ebola or even exhibiting symptoms.

Turkey

As the next door neighbor to Syria, Turkey is on the front lines in the fight against the Islamic State (IS). The spillover from the Syrian conflict—the influx of several thousand Syrian refugees and preventing extremist violence from spreading to Turkey—has generated huge challenges for Turkish government and law enforcement. In response to the IS threat, the Turkish Parliament is facing criticism for its new legislation. Turkey’s new laws are similar to what the United States was trying to accomplish with the Patriot Act. While the United States relies upon military and intelligence responses to terrorism, many European and Asian countries emphasize policing and law enforcement to combatting predicate offenses to terrorism. As such, the legislation gives broader authority for Turkish law enforcement to:

• Search people and vehicles
• Detain people for up to 48 hours without prosecutorial authorization
• Increased penalties for protesters disseminating propaganda or inciting terrorism
• Use firearms in their efforts to prevent attacks or bombings of public buildings
• Take instructions from governors to pursue particular crimes or individuals suspected of criminal behavior

Understandably, there are negative reactions to the new legislation mainly because of the potential for police to abuse their authority. Additionally, allowing police to take instruction from governors to pursue particular crimes or individuals is a breach of the system of checks and balances. However, IS presents a serious threat to the safety of Turkish citizens and to Turkish national security. The new legislation may be able to help law enforcement prevent attacks on Turkish citizens.

A Fine Line

A Pew Research Center poll attempted to take the temperature of the public’s reaction to the torture report. The poll found that 51% of Americans believe post-9/11 interrogation tactics are effective to prevent terrorist attacks. Of those remaining, 29% think it is unjustified and 20% don’t know. While a majority of Republicans think the interrogation methods are justified, Democrats are split on the issue.

Source: PEW National Survey on CIA Interrogation Methods

Based on the majority of public opinion on these issues and a multitude of similarly controversial policies across the globe, it would appear that this imbalance will be an enduring issue. Taking the CIA interrogation issue as an example, we can conclude that if there is no decisive opinion, public sentiment can sway in either direction. If government gives more priority to national security than to civil liberties, the public may grow weary of the pattern of intrusion. Since younger demographics are the group which take the most issue with government privacy intrusions and rights violations, this may be the more likely scenario. If opinion sways in the other direction, it is possible that we can see an alarmingly disproportionate relationship between the protection of individual rights and invasive national security policies. We would see a decline in the protection of civil liberties and an increasingly broad definition of what constitutes a national security threat. The questions remain:

How have we drawn the line between civil liberties and national security?

How will these decisions evolve over time?

What can we do to keep our rights and remain vigilant against security threats at the same time?

Source: PEW National Survey on CIA Interrogation Methods

The most pertinent question we can ask however, is: why aren’t more people paying attention to this? The Washington Post’s reaction to the Pew study questions what effect pubic disinterest had on the results. The survey showed that only 23% of Americans followed the story closely. Interest in CIA interrogation methods lagged behind domestic issues like police brutality, the state of the U.S. economy, and sexual assault on college campuses. In order to solve the problem, the American public first needs to decide if one exists. International comparisons, like the ones outlined in this post, can help to put the issue in context to decide where the line should be between upholding civil liberties and national security.