The Price of European Indifference

Indifference cannot be countenanced.

Passive tolerance to evil through inaction or indifference.

You see, the scale of the suffering numbs us into a kind of indifference.

The indifference of some countries to settling their arrears was a cause of great concern.

It was the continuing devastating war in the Congo and the indifference of the world.

Solidarity is an excellent therapy for many mental states arrogance, desperation, indifference, egomania.

Encouraged by this indifference, Armenians successfully committed historical crime and genocide against Azerbaijanis.

As the world watches Libya s Muammar el Qaddafi slaughter his own people, we should remember the human cost of international indifference.

The challenges that are hampering the Government's efforts on the ground are all related to the indifference of the international community.

What accounts for this apparent indifference also evident among European politicians to the looming political risks in Britain?

And there's kind of a bifurcation people had to choose between fear and acceptance actually fear and indifference they kind of chose suspicion.

The population was very concerned at the lack of progress towards self determination and the international community's apparent indifference to their fate.

And there is more bad news for Erdoğan. The perception that his true objective in supporting the Islamic State is to stem the rise of the Kurds, bolstered by his apparent indifference to the agony in Kobani, has jeopardized one of his major legacies peace talks with the PKK.

But perhaps the most interesting and intriguing facet of this process is President Barack Obama s eloquent indifference to the entire affair. So far, at least, he has refused to intercede in the discussion of whether federal law should trump state legislation, having said that he has bigger fish to fry.

Germany s Foreign Ministry is preparing a policy on Russian German relations that will enshrine indifference to Putin s lawlessness as being in the national interest of the most powerful member of the European Union. But indifference becomes appeasement when it encourages Putin to pursue his lawless ways in the international arena, as in his current campaign to strangle Georgia s economy.

In Uganda, most of our successes have been attained in the face of opposition, indifference or distracting, superficial heckling by quite a number of our external partners.

And recall that it was indifference to the non reforming East European communist regimes on the part of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union that ultimately sealed their fate and delivered Havel from a prison cell to Prague Castle. Havel, of course, was a beneficiary of such indifference, but he never practiced it, remaining a fighter for truth and freedom throughout his life.

It is suicidal for the EU to draw on Europe s worst political traditions, the common denominator of which is the idea that evil must be appeased and that the best way to achieve peace is through indifference to the freedom of others. Just the opposite is true such policies expose an indifference to one s own freedom and pave the way for war.

And recall that it was indifference to the non reforming East European communist regimes on the part of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union that ultimately sealed 160 their fate and delivered Havel from a prison cell to Prague Castle. Havel, of course, was a beneficiary of such indifference, but he never practiced it, remaining a fighter for truth and freedom throughout his life.

If we want to build something better on the ruins of multicultural indifference, our dialogue must become more profound. Prejudice must make way for empathy, and alienation for respect.

But, despite deep divisions among the rebels, the cost of Western indifference is probably higher than the risk of intervention. The international community can no longer hide behind the pretense of ignorance.

We have maintained on several occasions in our region and elsewhere that the principle of non intervention in the domestic affairs of States must be associated with the idea of non indifference .

In 2005, on the UN s 60th anniversary, the General Assembly, convening at head of state and government level, unanimously endorsed the concept of states responsibility to protect populations at risk of genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. With that vote, the international community began to eradicate the shameful indifference that accompanied the Holocaust, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur, and too many similar catastrophes.

They are the victims of hateful crimes that are a stain on the conscience of all humanity but that take place against a background of almost total indifference on the part of the international community.

Why the indifference? Are investors too complacent, or is their apparent lack of concern rational, given that the actual economic and financial impact of current geopolitical risks at least so far has been modest?

And the army has already become the purview of nationalistic and religious cadres, even without conscription of the ultra orthodox one of the centrist camp s demands in pressing for fairer national burden sharing. As a result, the Israeli state seems to be moving closer to its Asian counterparts, with their emphasis on economic innovation and their indifference to universal values or, for that matter, peace.

In the last few years, the Jewish state seems to have done more than all of its combined enemies to delegitimize itself in the eyes of the world. Its leaders apparent inability to think in strategic terms, and their indifference to the tribunal of global public opinion, is resulting in growing frustration among its citizens and, what may be more dangerous, deepening international isolation.

International political indifference and a sense of inertia have characterized the conduct of the international community, which has aggravated the civil war and allowed unabated human suffering and environmental destruction to continue in my country.

France has a common history and geography with the countries on the southern Mediterranean shore. The duty to intervene and the cost of indifference is probably higher for France than for any other Western country.

Who could have said with certainty that the economic upturn announced by Hollande was real rather than aspirational? Beyond his message s wishful thinking, the public s reaction to the messenger was a mixture of disbelief and indifference.

Whether it is mutilations in Sierra Leone, genocide in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans or disappearances in Latin America, the parties to conflicts have acted with deliberate indifference to those conventions.

In the international context, we join the appeal for a more just and humane world order in which the less developed nations are not condemned for all time to discrimination, indifference and backwardness.

This is explained by reports of police inaction and indifference to criminal complaints from internally displaced persons and security incidents within camps, some of which were apparently triggered by the police themselves and Janjaweed members being recruited into the police.

Many consider secession unlikely, but Dodik s threat does heighten fear that today s fragile status quo could break down. While nobody expects the mass violence of the 1990 s to recur, that does not justify diplomatic indifference and inaction.

In this context, the US s inexplicable indifference towards the region is both naïve and dangerous. The incoming Democratic US Congress has signaled that free trade deals with Peru and Columbia need to be renegotiated.

State counsel Kaduna State Ministry of Justice.

State of the Art, or Art of the State?

This indifference mirrors similar reactions to other recent global appeals, such as for schooling for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The lack of concern seems particularly callous when one considers that the cost of educating a refugee child is no more than 8 a week.

Europe s politicians are by and large proud of the EU and the way it has both grown and deepened. But it is also the EU s growing complexity that is at the root of voters waning enthusiasm, so their indifference is a matter for serious concern.

On the other hand, the EU is paying a steep price for the bureaucratic anonymity of its leaders. A process of escalating alienation and indifference between the Union and its citizens is at work, illustrated by low turnout in the last European Parliament elections.

We find ourselves at a crossroads with two paths before us one of injustice and indifference that leads to a world that is increasingly poor, unfair and insecure, and the other the path of far reaching change that leads to peace and global well being.

Today s indifference is particularly, though not exclusively, evident in the United States. President Barack Obama was silent on the issue in his re election campaign, and breathed scarcely a word about it in his first campaign, too.

It is the position of the Working Group that freedom of expression protects not only opinions and ideas that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive, or as a matter of indifference, but also those that may offend actors in public life and politicians, including political leaders.

Yet the EU s strategy towards Ukraine has been ambiguous and obscure. The Orange Revolution s reform drive has been slowed or even halted by domestic political and economic crises, but also by the Union s perceived indifference to Ukraine s fate.