I hate posting about the bad stuff in Ukraine. There are so many good things to report about Ukraine’s development and people and culture. However, among the organizations that I work with, specifically the IOM which does work and research on xenophobia in Ukraine, there has been a disturbing increase in racially-motivated violence in Kyiv over the last few years. Or at least, more of it is finally being reported by the victims. I wouldn’t post about this to instigate trouble or cause Ukraine bad publicity if I didn’t feel this particular issue is something that is causing serious harm and even death to foreigners in Kyiv.

Last week, a young asylum-seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo was killed on his way to the grocery store near the Nivkiy metro station. He was stabbed 15 times, and died before even getting medical attention. The attack occurred on a Sunday evening, around dinner time, and there were many witnesses to the crime. So far, there have been no solid arrests and the police have not cited racial motivations. Whenever crimes like this happen, where people of obvious foreign origin are attacked, beaten, harrassed, and even killed, the authorities will label it as “hooliganism.” It has gotten to the point where they are issuing warnings at work that there will be public demonstrations by Nationalists and for our foreign coworkers to be careful to avoid these scenes.

Last October, four Asian tourists were not lucky enough to get one of these warnings.

Earlier this month on the same day that ultra-nationalists joined a mass march in favour of recognising the WWII-era UPA Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a Bangladeshi man was brutally murdered in Kyiv in an apparent racially motivated attack, while three Chinese girls were stabbed in a separate incident.

Ukrainian officials are loathe to admit that this rising tide of violence against foreigners is racially or nationalistically motivated, preferring to categorise all such attacks as common hooliganism, but the organised nature of the violence and numerous eye-witness accounts of individual attacks, citing large groups of teenagers screaming racial epithets, would seem to confirm that this is a far bigger and more sinister issue than simple youthful excess.

This kind of violence happens more often than people realize, and the IOM and UNHCR are taking more steps to document and expose this dark trend. Whether or not Ukraine is willing to step up and respond will be another story. As far as I have heard, it was originally the Jewish Lobby, which has strong organization, that was able to get President Yushchenko to react to this problem.

This article was written a year ago in RFE/RL:

Russia/Ukraine: Analyst Says Racial Violence On The Rise

State Of Ukraine

As for Ukraine, Butkevich feels the situation is worsening rather than improving.

Butkevich notes that law enforcement agencies are doing a better job at combating the problem of ethnic violence and that there has been a rise in arrests over the past four years.

“Neo-Nazi violence in Ukraine is something that gets almost no media attention, which is mostly focused on what happens in Russia,” Butkevich said. “But over the past three years it has really gotten very bad. And this is after years of neo-Nazi violence almost being not even a problem in Ukraine.”

In Ukraine, where there are fewer Muslims and foreign students than in Russia, Jews are the primary target for neo-Nazi groups. Most of the attacks occur in Eastern Ukraine and in Kyiv.

And the police response has been wholly inadequate, according to Butkevich: “I have to say [that] as many positive things that have happened over the past year — I’m not denying the progress — the way that the Ukrainian law enforcement officials have reacted to this problem makes the Russians look good.”

The article highlights the response problem, although I don’t know if the problem is mostly a Jewish problem anymore. While Jewish people are still being attacked, people from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are the easiest to spot in Ukraine as far as foreigners are concerned. Tatar Muslims and Roma are also targeted. Even if they can speak the language(s) really well, they have a difficult time dealing with the police. I have American friends, of Asian descent, who have been detained for no reason for hours before being released because, often, the companies or organizations they work for step in. I know people from Africa and the Middle East who are jumped and beaten as often as once a month. And the people who attack them make no qualms about expressing their dislike for foreigners, whether in groups or by individuals.

The big issue is going to be when Euro 2012 comes to town. The government is spending millions on improving the structure and aesthetic qualities of its cities, however an issue like this could blow Ukraine’s chances of being considered a modern country for a long period of time. If fans are attacked or unprotected, all of Europe will be watching.

And aside from this future consideration, the present considerations are enough. It is not just that these attacks are happening, but also that these attacks are going unanswered. Foreign students and workers will not want to come here if they are not safe and are warned ahead of time that the police will not respond in case something happens because this kind of violence is not taken seriously. Just the foreign students that come and study here alone spend millions of dollars on tuition, living expenses, etc. I already know of a UK citizen of Zimbabwean decent who is cutting his stay in Ukraine short next month because he is violently attacked on the streets on a regular basis. His company had to hire a driver to take him to work because it is not safe for him to walk on the streets. The US State Department Country Report on Human Rights in Ukraine details other such accounts.

I am not calling Ukrainians racist, but even if small groups of Ukrainians are committing this violence, especially if it is in an organized fashion with intent to harm people based on their race or ethnicity, it needs to be responded to and it needs to stop. It is also not to say Ukraine has done nothing, but the trends are clear that it is not enough. And me saying all of this hardly means a thing; that is to say it has to be Ukrainians that unite their fellow Ukrainians to respond to this terrible crime (like this and this). I will say that if Ukraine cannot get this problem under control, it will never move forward as a European country or a responsible member of the international community.

Heard, watched, discussed, I have been receiving more and more questions from my friends in Ukraine lately about my opinion on the US presidential elections. Appropriately timed, I read this article in the Times a couple days ago on the attention the election is drawing around the world.

From Berlin to London to Jakarta, the destinies of Democratic and Republican contenders in Iowa or New Hampshire, or Nevada or South Carolina, have become news in a way that most political commentators cannot recall. It is as if outsiders are pining for change in America as much as some American presidential candidates are promising it.

The personalities of the Democratic contest in particular — the potential harbinger of America’s first African-American or female president — have fascinated outsiders as much as, if not more than, the candidates’ policies on Iraq, immigration or global finances.

And there is a palpable sense that, while democratic systems seem clunky and uninspiring to voters in many parts of the Western world, America offers a potential model for reinvigoration…

But there are broader concerns. As Ramesh Thakur, a political science professor in India, wrote: “We foreigners can but pray that the new president, whoever he or she may be, will return America to its strengths, values and the tradition of exporting hope and other optimism. And so help to lift America and the world up, not tear one another down.”

Even my friends in the smaller cities in Ukraine have been keeping tabs on the primary winners. As far as Ukraine’s stake in the outcome of the election, Ukraine has an interesting dynamic with the U.S. The U.S. has been invaluable in certain respects of Ukraine’s security and development goals, and the ties between the two countries are strong, especially as there is a significant Ukrainian diaspora in the States and Canada. However Ukraine also spends a significant amount of its westward-looking foreign policy on the EU, as it has ambitions to one day join the Union. Nevertheless, the current U.S. President, despite being in office for the most significant event in Ukraine’s independent history and despite Ukraine’s sacrifice in providing troops to the Iraq war, still has not made an appearance in Ukraine. Both former presidents Clinton and Bush, Sr. made their marks here in Ukraine during their terms. According to Unian, Ukraine expects that Bush will visit this April, but either way, as a lame duck, his visit will not mean as much as it would have earlier. People are hoping for someone with stronger diplomatic skills and leadership, even if they know they can’t vote themselves. I have not had anyone trying to influence me either way or tell me who I should vote for, but my experience has been the same as the article points out: very few have shown interest in the Republican side of the race.

In case you’re curious to get some outside perspective on the US presidential elections, here are a few foreign media sites that provide full coverage:
The BBC: US Elections 2008
Al Jazeera: Focus US Elections 2008
Xinhua Chinese News Agency: US Presidential Election 2008
New Zealand Herald: Race for the White House
International Herald Tribune (Paris): US Elections 2008 (section on right side of screen)

Yes, I did post about the article in today’s Buffalo News regarding the victims of trafficking at massage parlors in Western New York. I was glad to see the article, but not so happy about the way it was written. Nonetheless, the link to the post is here- Massage parlor arrests in Western New York

When I said I was off hiatus, I probably should have mentioned the high amount of deadlines I have scheduled for this month regarding my research and activities here in Ukraine. Unfortunately, it has left me at a difficult place to be posting and thus, I have been slacking on my duties as a WNY Media contributor. I apologize.

So as you noticed, I have posted exactly jack in the last two weeks or so. My week in the States for the holidays was a highly unproductive blogging period. It was great to see my family and friends though, as well as going to the Winter Classic and a lot of my favorite restaurants in Buffalo. I stocked up on Frank’s and peanut butter, and headed back to Europe with Adam. We almost immediately went off to Krakow for a few days, followed by a day trip to Lviv, and finally he returned to the States from Kyiv yesterday and I am going through a mini panic attack with all the work I have to do in the next month. The flight back was just as crazy the flight to the States. Apparently United/Lufthansa can’t get their act together either. At least for the trouble, Adam and I got moved to business class on the trans-Atlantic flight to Frankfurt from Dulles. So that’s how the other half lives…
Nonetheless, here I am posting at Gloria Jeans, and I will probably stay, work, and close out the place tonight until I go to Zoloti Vorota to watch the Packers/Seattle game with Hans. I did create a web album of the pictures from my Chornobyl trip. I haven’t created the captions yet, but if you follow my last post, you can figure out where most of the pictures are from.

Chornobyl and Pripyat Trip

There is so much to post about and I’m a little overwhelmed with the idea of posting more now. My next post will probably focus on our trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but there is obviously a lot of international news to sift through. It will have to wait until tomorrow though.

I’ve never toured a postwar area, but if I were to imagine what it would look like, the town of Pripyat, Ukraine in the Chornobyl exclusion zone would give me the perfect inspiration. A town, formerly populated by the workers of the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant, is completely abandoned. I went there today, along with a small group of Americans, one Ukrainian tourist, and our four Ukrainian tour guides and driver. Pripyat.com runs tours to the exclusion zone, the sarcophagus, and some of the neighboring villages- some abandoned, some reinhabited. Originally, I was supposed to go there with the Fulbrighters last week, but overslept my alarm (or rather may not have set it properly) and missed it. Sergiy Mirniy, the head of the trip, was kind enough to offer me a chance to join this group. One of the group member’s daughter works for the UN and has toured with Sergiy to Chornobyl before, which is how they ended up taking the tour with him.

After the first checkpoint, we stopped in this small village of Opane, which was been abandoned and left in such a state that Wes Craven himself couldn’t replicate it in his wildest fantasies. I walked into one of the houses, and it seems just as the story goes- a family is told they have to evacuate immediately but will eventually be allowed to return so they pack the valuables, and leave the rest behind. But they never returned. There were still old newspapers from 1986 that hadn’t been moved. Anything worth selling has been looted. And this small village housed about 3,000 people.

Now transfer that to the town of Pripyat, once inhabited by around 48,000 people. The town is full of schools, stores, apartment buildings, a hotel, restaurants, the cultural building- all completely abandoned and looted. The roads are overgrown and cracked. Our driver had spent two years driving for the Soviet Army in Afghanistan so this wasn’t much of a challenge driving-wise, but he was very nervous about being in the zone itself.

It looked like a war had happened in the town, but it was a war that had left no bodies behind. Most windows were shattered, the walls and ceilings crumbling, dolls and books scattered all over the floors. We walked over broken glass, building material, ceramic, metal, etc. This definitely isn’t a trip for the light-hearted traveler.

Two things struck me the most:

1.) Sasha. This young man accompanied us to his former apartment in Pripyat that he lived in as a child before the explosion. His manner seemed detached until we were looking around the apartment and his old toy closet was open with some of his old stuff laying inside. He said its the first time he had seen it since he evacuated, and it was quite moving to watch him pick up some of the pieces. He also had various remnants of his life which appeared throughout the town. Apparently, his mother was quite a famous Soviet poet.

2.) The cultural building. At one point, we walked into the gymnasium where people had played handball and volleyball. All the huge windows were shattered, and you could see an abandoned ferris wheel outside. There were still gym shoes scattered across the floor, and the prints from the balls hitting the wall were still there. It was a blip on the radar of history, frozen.

On the way there, we were shown a video of Pripyat before the explosion- the green boulevards, the people, the square, the cultural building, etc. Not even for a moment while walking around could I picture the way it was before the explosion. Often, when you’re out doing historical sight-seeing and the guide is explaining to you what happened, why this spot is important, etc., you can picture in your mind what it looked like. The town lacked a presence of life, even though there was vast, untouched evidence of human existence there. From the top of the tallest building in Pripyat, you can look out across the entire town, and see all the apartment buildings and the plant in the far background. If you want to truly understand the nature and human impact of nuclear catastrophe, this is one solemn way to go about it.

The sarcophagus was especially depressing. We were brought to the building just near it that has a small display including a model of the reactor showing what it looks like inside the sarcophagus. The area has various devices monitoring radiation levels outside the building. The structure itself is just huge. And it’s rusting like crazy. The woman who heads up the international affairs of the office kindly, but passionately spoke with us about the current situation of the reactor, its impact, and its future. It was her birthday, by the way. Supposedly, within the next few years, a multimillion dollar project will begin to completely enclose the existing structure in a new structure that will last for hundreds of years, and considering how long the danger will be present, it seems more like buying time until a future generation will have to find a solution.

But part of what Sergiy wanted us to take away from this was not just the devastation of the accident, but also the hope that was awoken in its aftermath. He said, back then, when he was a commander of the radiation reconnaissance crew and platoon inside the zone several months after the explosion, he never would have imagined having this sort of exchange with Americans. He delighted in showing us evidence of the resilience of nature- a green plant sprouting from the door frame of the cultural building, a tree that grew in the crack of concrete and had fallen over but was still sprouting green branches.

I’m sure you’ve gotten an idea of how great Sergiy really is. I appreciated the second chance he gave me to go on the trip when he just as well could have told me “too bad”. Just a little more about him:

He was the officer, responsible for management of the company’s radiation reconnaissance missions, and was cited for bravery and heroism by the Commander of Kiev Military District. He has an MSc in physical chemistry and an MSc in environmental sciences and policy, complemented by courses in the social sciences and humanities (history and literature). Now he is an expert in Chernobyl and the mitigation of radiation and ecological disasters, the author of a scientific monograph on the actual state of the Chernobyl mitigation workers’ (liquidators’) health and several important international generalizing papers on Chernobyl and regularities of contemporary disasters. He also wrote several books of Chernobyl prose, already translated into English and Hungarian, and two screenplays, decorated at prestigious international competitions Koronatsija slova [Crowning the word] (Kiev-2005) and Kinostsenariy [Screenplay] Magazine Competition (Moscow-1997).

Needless to say, I felt very lucky to have had him as my guide. His heart is in all the right places for this sort of thing. He even rescued two puppies of the checkpoint guard’s dog and brought them to people who lived in one of the reinhabited villages. We were actually able to meet one woman who evacuated, but came back to this village not long afterwards and has lived there ever since.

This will be a Christmas Eve that I never forget. Strangely enough, I thought I had posted this yesterday before I went to the airport to find out my flights got screwed up. Well, luckily, most of it was saved and my taxi is picking me up in an hour to go back to the airport for take 2 of this fiasco. There were many great pictures from the trip that I will have to post to a Picasa album as posting only a few here will not do the trip justice.

Map from the BBC

As of today, The Schengen Zone of the European Union has expanded to include nine additional EU countries including Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Malta. Three of these countries border Ukraine. The Schengen Zone is the area of the EU that has eliminated internal border controls so once you’re in one country, you can essentially move freely to the next within the zone. The NYT/Reuters and BBC articles talk about the extension itself as well as the celebrations that took place including the symbolic joint removal of border equipment between old and new Schengen countries. A bit is mentioned about the EU’s neighbors who are neither in the European Union nor have any near prospects of joining like Ukraine, Moldova, etc. but hardly enough to get a good picture of how people are feeling.

It seems that although this move is generally good for the Schengen Zone, especially it’s new members, people on every side of the border (or lack there of) are feeling a little tense. As examples, Germans and Austrians seem to fear what might slip into the Schengen zone through its new members, Poland fears losing business from its close neighbors, and Ukrainians are concerned about their newest limitations in crossing into Europe, especially Poland.

Surprisingly, there were more articles in some of the main Ukrainian news sites about the latest moves of Tymoshenko’s goverment (yes, she did finally get elected Prime Minister) than there were about this expansion that affects pretty much the entirety of the western border of Ukraine. This article breaks down the new rules of Ukrainians traveling to Poland. Some Ukrainians will still be able to apply for visas to the new States free of charge, but ordinary Ukrainians will now have to pay 35 Euros for Schengen visas, at best. If the agreement between the EU and Ukraine on the new visa regime isn’t ratified by January 1, 2008, then the fee will be 60 Euros, I guess. And I’m not quite sure about these national visas Poland will continue to or has already issued.

MSNBC/The Financial Times had a great article on how it seems to be impacting both sides, although it seems the people they picked to quote were pretty random.

Just beyond the new red and blue border post in Vysne Nemecke marking the frontier between Slovakia and Ukraine, the Pannonian plain runs along the Carpathian Mountains, and one of Europe’s largest remaining old-growth forests.

As of Friday, those forests and mountains mark the European Union’s exterior boundary following the entry of Slovakia and eight other countries into the passport-free Schengen zone…

This heavily forested corner of Europe has long been a haven for smugglers and illegal migrants, seeking access to some of the world’s wealthiest economies. In past years it was relatively easy to walk through the forest from Ukraine. But, thanks to European Union funding, the 92km border now bristles with patrols, thermal sensors and more than 250 cameras…

North of Vysne Nemecke, on the other side of the forest, lies the Polish border city of Przemysl, where Poland’s imminent entry into the Schengen zone is viewed with trepidation by both Poles and Ukrainians who make a living by trading across the border. They fear the visas, which will be more expensive and harder to obtain for the Schengen area, will make it difficult for Ukranians to cross the border for work…

“There is no work at home, we have to come here to make any money,” says Ludmilla, a greying woman in her 50s selling a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka next to a display of cheap scarves and plastic Chinese toys. “The new rules are bad for you and bad for us.”

The article immediately took me back to last year when I traveled a few times from Chernivtsi to Przemysl to visit my relatives in Poland. The first time I went, we stopped in Lviv and about a half dozen of these “greying 50-something women” got in my wagon and immediately started unpacking and rewrapping cigarettes, sneakers, and bottles of vodka; some they put in bags and others they wrapped around their bodies with mailing tape. I was in absolute amazement, but these women were just chatting and taping each other, having a good old time. No one was stopped or questioned at the border. The second time I went, two of these women helped me carry my overstuffed luggage to the other side of the train station to catch my train to Milicz. Don’t ever underestimate them :-). I have a feeling these women will be traveling over the border much less now.

This border between Slovakia and Ukraine is also the subject of much debate among the refugee and migration community as thousands of migrants and asylum-seekers are now being spotted, sent back and detained in Ukraine at this border. Mark Mardell’s Euroblog has an excellent piece on the situation of the detained asylum-seekers near the border. Ukraine’s approach to these refugees has been considered somewhat less than positive by the IOs that monitor it.

A Transitions Online article I found on the situation of Schengen’s new neighbors was much more grim. The concerns were as follows:

The citizens of other countries will have to bear the full visa costs. For example, the hapless citizens of Belarus will have to pay about one-third of their average monthly salaries in order to visit neighboring Poland or Lithuania, doubtless to the delight of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, a tyrant who thrives on his people’s isolation.

I thought the authors suggestions under the section “A Better Neighborhood” were interesting. I assume he’s making reference to the Neighborhood Policy, which the EU operates with its immediate non-EU or non-applicant neighbors.

The EU should adopt and make public a set of common standards for visa applicants, as has been proposed by the European Commission. The new standards should ensure that visa procedures are not humiliating to applicants.

Seems reasonable, and much less confusing.

Research has shown that a number of EU consulates apply discriminatory criteria toward certain groups of applicants, such as young women, who in some consulates in Ukraine have visa-refusal rates in excess of 80 percent. Common standards should define clearly the situations in which a visa can be refused and provide for a right of appeal. The standards’ application, along with the implementation of the visa-facilitation agreements, should be monitored regularly by the Commission and by independent watchdog organizations.

This does make things a little tougher for me, particularly as I study human trafficking and am looking into how it is that traffickers are able to forge documents to get visas, etc. If the visa facilitation in turn facilitated things like trafficking, Schengen citizens, Ukrainian citizens, and basically the whole of humanity loses. Monitoring by watchdogs? I should hope so.

A big step toward visa facilitation could be achieved through consular cooperation among EU member states, whereby a country with consular departments on the ground could undertake to service applicants wishing to travel to any other Schengen member. One such initiative is already underway: the Hungarian consulate in Moldova will be empowered to issue visas for Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Latvia, Estonia, and Slovenia.

A single EU visa-issuing center is also planned for Serbia, and this solution should be emulated elsewhere. It would make a vast difference, filling the gaps in national consular networks and setting high service standards.

Also makes sense, at least for Schengen member states. I’ll be interested to see how it works out in Serbia.

It is high time to put the question of lifting visa requirements on the agenda of the “enhanced” European Neighborhood Policy for Eastern Europe, which was launched by the German EU presidency in the first half of 2007. Roadmaps should be drawn in partnership with interested “neighbors” and the western Balkans, setting out clear conditions that the countries have to meet in order to have visas abolished.

There it is! The ENP, something I’ve kept my eye on ever since EuroSim 2005. I understand where the author is coming from, and I think the EU has done a little too much promising and not enough delivering, but I also understand this is an extremely difficult process and Ukraine has quite a few security problems compounded by corrupt practices in enforcement that it needs to nail down first before expecting the EU to open its visa regime. Nonetheless, the Schengen Zone is now at Ukraine’s border, making the EU closer and more closed off at the same time. I’m sure more reactions will be pouring in as Ukrainians actually experience the restrictions.

Should you feel compelled to voice your opinion in support of stronger EU-Ukrainian cooperation on the visa issue, Open Ukraine Foundation, International Renaissance Foundation, and the Centre for Peace, Conversion and Foreign Policy of Ukraine initiated an appeal online that you can sign, available in English and Ukrainian.

Four more days until I immediately run to Gabriel’s Gate for a house brew, a veggie souvlaki salad and a single order of barbeque wings. Not that I’m counting.

Today was a sobering afternoon for me. Above are a handful of children at the Komarivka orphanage near Chernihiv. I went there today with a few other people I know here from Dems Abroad. Geoff Berlin, the head of the Ukraine chapter, visits there regularly and is involved with a project to get a new heating system installed. The kids immediately ran up to the car screaming his name when we arrived. As Geoff indicated about his first time going there, I was anticipating some combination of Charles Dickens and Lord of the Flies, especially when I found out there were about 128 children living at this particular site all between the ages of 6 and 16. Before 6, there are separate institutions for orphans. After 16, the children will go on, often, to technical school or something like this.

However, as we discussed today, there really isn’t a wealth of knowledge about what actually happens to these children once they leave the orphanage. I came across this topic earlier in my research with La Strada and IPEC concerning the risk of orphans and the children of labor migrants to trafficking. These are two particularly vulnerable populations with a weak (if any) structure of support against these types of abuses.

But, back to why my preconceptions were wrong. Despite the rather distressing situation of the heat and clothing of the orphanage, the kids were good natured and pleasant. My contribution to the activities was a bag full of crayons, coloring books, fairy tales, and stickers for them to play with. The crayons I should have been a little wiser about handing out, but they were so well-behaved in general. Most of them would come up to ask me if they could take another picture to color.

I was definitely not sized right to be sitting at those desks. Ha ha. That little chap next to me was very quiet and concentrated really hard on his drawing, filling in every shape and staying within the lines. I feel like he has such potential. And the young ladies at the desk in front of me were my tour guides for the afternoon- Natasha (purple hat) and Anya (pink hat). Anya’s a real pistol, and incredibly sharp. Natasha was more quiet, but affectionate and eager to show how well she can read and say the numbers in English.

The people at the orphanage were quite nice as well. We were complimenting the food that they served the children (and us) to one of the vice-directors, and she mentioned the children eat fives times a day- breakfast, midday snack, lunch (which is the largest meal), another snack, and dinner. She said while the food isn’t a problem right now, good clothing has been harder to come by. I had noticed earlier that many children were wearing jackets with broken zippers or shoes that were inadequate for the weather or falling apart. A teacher that was in the room watching the kids with me while we were drawing thanked me for the crayons, but asked if I could bring pens next time (more for classroom use). So while the kids seemed cared for, there were still some Dickensian elements with regard to the lack of quite a few basic items. It was the children’s spirits and manners that took me back.

Some pictures from outside:

The above is a new building of some sort. I think Anya said it would be for bedrooms.

And finally is a photo from inside the gymnasium that was filled with decorations for a visit tomorrow from a Ukrainian Olympic athlete of some sort who comes out to visit regularly, I guess. It smelled like they had put a fresh layer of blue paint as well. The gentleman on the stage is the director of the orphanage.

I entitled this post the “First visit to Komarivka” because I definitely plan on going back over the course of my grant here. There is a “website” of sorts for this orphanage, but I can’t tell if it has been updated recently or of it’s actually sponsored by the orphanage itself. Right now, I’m absolutely wiped and I have a long day starting in six hours with a day trip to Chornobyl. More on that tomorrow.

I’m sure the small article in the Times didn’t jump out at you as you scanned the headlines this morning, but Yulia Tymoshenko lost the re-vote yesterday in the Rada for the premiership. With a squeaker majority of only two votes, the fact that she lost by only one vote doesn’t come as a huge shock to me. Even though the newly elected speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk stated that “nothing will prevent parliament from voting for Yulia Tymoshenko” prior to the vote. Even though media already had complete reports on the make-up of her government. The girls at the La Strada office and I watched Tymoshenko’s speech to the press after the vote. We were pretty sure she had been crying, or at least she appeared as if so. As far as I know, she’s still standing by her charge that the voting was rigged or there was some foul play afoot in the voting.

Now President Yushchenko has decided to press ahead with her nomination, and parliament was supposed to reconvene today, but the opposition has said they want to “first to deal with the selection of senior officials in the chamber” and demanded a meeting of parliament’s conciliation council.

*Sigh*

Well, sort of. We have wireless internet at the apartment now, which is fantastic. Although it’s kind of unstable as to when it feels like taking a break or slowing down. I have in fact had to restart this page five times already. But it is the same at work too. If I ever doubted whether my efficiency was connected with my access to high-speed internet, the last few months have undoubtedly proved their reliance on each other. Especially as a new kid on the block at WNY Media

Speaking of efficiency, I took the train to and from Chernivtsi this weekend to visit my old friends there. Its still pretty ridiculous that platzkart runs about 50 hryvnias or so. However, I had a Prospekt Pravdy experience on the way down- at first, I was pretty sketched out by the crowd I was sitting with. Four guys, two of which were enjoying a small feast on the small table between the beds. The other guys just staring off into space, occasionally catching my eye. They all turned out to be pretty funny guys. By the end of the trip, we had exchanged information and I got a great lesson in Ukrainian. We enjoyed the 1 hryvnia tea and they shared all of their food with me.

The ride back wasn’t quite as warm (literally that first trip down I nearly suffocated on the heat that was blasting in the wagon), but it was more comfortable. New platzkarts, dare I say? The beds were more comfortable and the top ones are further from the shelving making them easier to get on to. The bathrooms didn’t reek of sitting piss, and in fact were quite clean. I was impressed, but it still takes 15 hours to get back to Kyiv. Step 1: Remove piss smell, Step 2: Make trains go faster.

Anyway, the new apartment has been working out quite well. I can walk to Maidan from here, which en route I pass the Rada and Ministers buildings. I have a view of the glorious domes of the lavra as well as the Rodina Mat in the distance. The weather has prevented any fantastic shots of the view from the balcony, not to mention I have to take them with my camera phone until I splurge on a new digital one. For now:

I have to say, despite the fact my first three months could have been much more productive, I truly enjoyed living with Tanya. The experience of getting up, having black coffee and squash kasha, packing onto the marshrutka with everyone else for the 30-40 minute ride to the Lukyanivska metro stop, not having a native or even fluent English speaker within walking distance, all gave me something I learned a great deal from. In comparison, these were the views from my previous apartment:

My room

I think a visit to Tanya is in order this Saturday. Only two weeks exactly until I return for Christmas/New Years.

Sorry for the serious delay in posting. Between research, work, Telders, and moving, this week got a little out of hand. And we also still don’t have internet at the apartment yet. Less than three weeks until I come home for a visit!
From The Age

The articles coming out on the UNAMID hybrid force set to deploy in January say things like “less than half” the troops expected to complete the project will be available to begin the mission. Actually it’s even less than a third. 6,500 out of 20,000 troops and 6,000 police will arrive in January for certain and possibly another 2,000 police will be available. Almost all of the 6,500 will be AU peacekeepers, the force that has already been conducting operations there.

The UN has accused Sudan of dragging it’s feet by stalling the entry of important equipment for the troops, and not providing agreements on the scope of the force’s activities as well as complicating the entry of non-African troops. Sudan has, of course, denied any of this and the has said that the SG’s statements are “unfair” The foreign minister states Sudan will make an official statement tomorrow regarding the force.

The force is also lacking critical equipment such as helicopters to provide to the troops. This has been atributed more towards lack of will power among SC members.

“While helicopters alone cannot ensure the success of the mission, their absence may well doom it to failure,” he said in a letter to Council members.

With only three weeks left before the 26,000-member U.N.-African Union force is scheduled to start deploying, Ban lamented the U.N.’s failure to get a commitment for even one helicopter.

Ban said he had personally contacted every country with the potential to contribute a helicopter — from industrialized to major developing nations — “to no avail.”

He said he was sending two high-level envoys to a summit of European Union and African leaders in Lisbon, Portugal, this weekend “to directly engage with as many key leaders as possible on this subject.”

“We are at the critical moment for Darfur,” Ban said. “Member states have spoken clearly about what must be done. It is time for them to walk their talk.”

The Sudanese government has also recently been dealing with the release of the British teacher accused of insulting Islam and the refusal to hand over officials suspected of war crimes to the ICC. Not that I have much sympathy for these loads their plates.

In the US, while these events may not directly effect the events above, they are related. H.R. 2489 has gone to President Bush for his signature. The Genocide Accountability Act expands the US’s power to prosecute those suspected of genocide. It expands the law as follows:

An amended U.S. Genocide Code expands U.S. ability to prosecute genocidaires in its borders. The current U.S. law is too narrow to provide adequate accountability for individuals in the United States who have committed genocide. According to the Genocide Intervention Network, the U.S. Justice Department has identified individuals who participated in the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides and currently live in the United States. Under current law, these individuals cannot be arrested or prosecuted because they are not U.S. nationals and the genocides they perpetrated did not take place in the United States.

A U.S. role in prosecuting genocidaires - even those who commit crimes outside of the U.S. - helps enforce an international code of justice. For example, the amended U.S. Code could allow for some of the worst perpetrators of genocide to be prosecuted in U.S. Courts. The current gap in the law has proven problematic; former U.S. officials have stated that the United States wanted to arrest and prosecute Cambodian dictator Pol Pot but couldn’t because of gaps in the U.S. criminal code.

H.R.2489 moves the U.S. toward a complimentary legal system. Under the Genocide Convention, State Parties are obligated to prevent and punish genocide wherever it occurs. These jurisdictional gaps under the U.S. Genocide Code must therefore be addressed for complementarity as well as impunity reasons-the U.S. must contribute to preventing and punishing the crime of genocide by ensuring jurisdiction over every scenario of an offender committing this crime. -From CGS

Lastly, a Times article came out today stating that the Senate is considering cutting money to the Millenium Challenge Corporation citing progress being slower than anticipated. Not that there hadn’t ben any progress, just that it had been too slow.

Eyeing the unspent billions [the money promised to go to the fund], the Senate has proposed that Congress provide no more than half the money up front for future five-year projects, which typically come with a price tag of $250 million to $700 million. Such projects are now fully financed at the start to make sure countries have the wherewithal to finish what they start…

By changing how its projects are financed, “then M.C.C. becomes like the World Bank and all the other countries using overseas development aid in stop and go fashion,” said John A. Kufuor, the president of Ghana, who heads the African Union. “The aid is spread so thin that at the end of the day the necessary difference is not made.”

The article also discusses some of the potential consequences of cutting this aid, citing the example of Burkina Faso, which has undergone lengths to meet the requirements to receive aid under the Millenium Challenge Corporation:

If the agency gets the lesser Senate amount, under the current rules requiring the money up front, Burkina Faso, a West African country that has spent more than two years qualifying for and drafting its $560 million to $620 million plan, will get nothing, agency officials said. Tanzania and Namibia are ahead of it in line.

Burkina Faso has gone to great lengths to meet the agency’s good governance standards. The agency gave it a $13 million grant to improve girls’ education, which the country used to build, among other things, schools with day care centers so school-age girls do not have to stay home to look after their younger siblings.

Identified by the International Finance Corporation as one of the most difficult places in the world to do business, Burkina Faso has also halved the number of days it takes to start a business, and reduced by a third the cost of registering property.

“What type of message does that send to Burkina Faso, a country that has spent a huge amount of political capital and money on this process?” he asked. “What does that tell the Togos, the Nigers that want to become eligible? It tells them: Do everything like Burkina Faso, make all these reforms, spend millions of your own money, and then maybe at the end we might be able to sign a compact with you — or maybe not.”

Now the article ends there, forcing readers to decide for themselves what the actual consequences of the promising aid and then not delivering it are. As the US has been slacking on aid to Africa (and the Millenium Challenge Corporation affects more than African nations), other countries like China have been stepping in to take’s its place, namely China. In a time when our reputation is so damaged internationally, making promises we chose to back out of won’t help us to become a more effective diplomatic force whether we are pushing for an international peacekeeping force in Darfur or for assistance in our own work abroad.

Off to Chernivtsi.