COMMENT | The right to practice and profess religion certainly has been one of the casualties caused by the Covid-19. The threat of the pandemic, which has been weathered globally for the past 12 months, has tremendously affected the universally accepted tenet of freedom of religion.
Religion, in any name and sect all over the world, has restricted its religious practices and rituals. The restrictions, although only relegated public religious practices to personal spaces, have in many ways affected the right to religion as a whole.
There is every reason why the right to religion is believed to have been undermined by the threat of Covid-19. Religious practices and rituals around the world directly contravened with the public health advice advocated in stopping the transmission of the virus.
They include public congregations in a large crowd, hand-based greetings as well as touching and kissing objects considered sacred. These practices signify the…
Simmering institutional tensions between the EU and the African Union resulted in the last-minute cancellation of a ‘mini-summit’ between European Union and African leaders planned for Wednesday (9 December).
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the current chair of the AU, called off the summit on Tuesday, and insiders to the talks say that the cancellation of the videoconference was the result of disagreements over the agenda and the format of the meeting.
No African heads of state aside from Ramaphosa were able to attend the summit. Neither was, from the EU side, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
An EU official blamed “agenda issues” for the cancellation.
The meeting had been billed by the EU as “an opportunity to build further momentum towards the upcoming summit and discuss the partnership between Europe and Africa.”
However, there is frustration among African officials that the EU seems intent on driving the agenda with little consultation.
The mini-summit had been announced in October by EU Council President Charles Michel, with minimum consultation with African leaders, shortly after plans for an EU-AU summit scheduled for October were abandoned because of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and disagreements over the agenda.
The European Commission’s strategy paper published in March promised to “build a more prosperous, more peaceful and more sustainable future for all”, around five proposed partnerships on energy, digitalisation, inward investment, peace and migration. The African Union is yet to publish its own position paper on its hopes from the partnership agenda.
“The EU needs to rethink its approach to the consultation process. The cancellation reflects the need to take the African side seriously,” a senior official involved in the talks told EURACTIV.
Having started this year with hopes of agreeing a ‘strategic partnership’ between the EU and Africa by the end 2020, little progress has been made, in part because the priorities of both continents have been focused on combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
The cancellation was greeted with dismay by development NGOs.
“The AU’s last-minute cancellation of today’s EU-AU leaders meeting sends a worrying signal of their lack of confidence in the EU’s commitment to a stronger partnership,” said Brandon Locke, policy and advocacy manager at The ONE Campaign.
“The EU’s partnership with Africa needs to move past a “donor-recipient” relationship to an alliance on equal footing, where Europe recognizes Africa’s interests and vision for its own future,” added Locke, who said the EU “needs to deliver with concrete commitments to rebalance the economic partnership between the two continents”.
Negotiators from the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific community signed off on a 20-year partnership deal to succeed the Cotonou Agreement last Thursday night (3 December) after nearly three years of difficult talks.
Although the new pact includes a new regional protocol between the EU and sub-Saharan Africa, and a new tougher text on migrant re-admission and return, it left trade relations unchanged and based on the controversial economic partnership agreements, widely criticised for perpetuating unbalanced trade relations between the EU and African countries.
Asia-Pacific markets reacted negatively to the unpromising Brexit trade deal perspective as well as to the indeterminate second US coronavirus relief bill in Thursday morning trade, according to CNBC News.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix were lower 0.39 percent and 0.17 percent respectively after the market opened. South Korea’s Kospi index fell 1.11 percent. Australian benchmark ASX 200 dropped 0.56 percent while its sections all finished in the red. The energy subindex was down 1.05 percent, as oil prices have declined.
Meanwhile, on Wall Street, stocks closed negatively on Wednesday evening, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq leading losses with a nearly 2 percent drop. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, Wall Street’s broadest stocks gauge, finished down 0.4 percent to close at 30,069, after a record high at 30,320. The S&P 500, a barometer for the top 500 US stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, slid 0.8 percent to finish at 3,673, after setting an all-time high of 3,712 earlier.
On Wednesday, British PM Boris Johnson held a further round of negotiations with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, where both of them agreed that a firm decision should be made by Sunday about the future of the talks. At the moment, trade with Northern Ireland and the level of access to British fishing grounds given to EU vessels are the most crucial issues in talks. The UK and the European Union are supposed to come to an agreement before the Brexit transition period expires on 31 December, as Boris Johnson refused to prolong it last year.
On Capitol Hill, debates over the second financial aid continue as the coronavirus-related crisis is striking the country. Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked over key provisions of the recently introduced $908 billion relief bill. The package has to be approved by 11 December, but Congress has requested another week to negotiate the bill, with a new deadline set for 18 December.
INDIANAPOLIS – Lilly Endowment Inc. has awarded 18 grants to museums and other cultural institutions across the United States to develop exhibitions and education programs that fairly and accurately portray the role of religion in the U.S. and around the world.
Grants totaling more than $43 million will support a range of organizations, from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to Colonial Williamsburg; from the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. These grants were awarded as part of the Endowment’s Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.
“Museums and other cultural institutions are trusted organizations and play an important role in teaching the American public about the world around them,” said Christopher Coble, the Endowment’s vice president for religion. “These organizations will use the grants to help visitors understand and appreciate the significant impact religion has had and continues to have on society in the United States and around the globe. Our hope is that these efforts will promote greater knowledge about and respect for people of diverse religious traditions.”
With one exception, the grants range in amount from $500,000 to $2.5 million. The organizations will use grant funds to develop projects that align with their missions and are appropriate for their constituencies. Many will draw on their extensive collections to mount temporary or permanent exhibitions featuring religious themes. Some will develop exhibitions focused on particular religious traditions or religion in specific historical periods. Others will examine religious themes and practices or explore the diversity of religious life in specific geographic regions. Nearly half of the grants will provide funds for endowments to help organizations create permanent staff positions or ongoing programs focused on religion. Many organizations will use a portion of their grants to enhance digital technologies to allow them to reach audiences virtually.
Among the organizations funded are: • The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art (Freer Gallery of Art and Artur M. Sackler Gallery), located in Washington, D.C., which will develop a series of exhibitions that help visitors understand the diversity of pre-modern and contemporary Muslim, Buddhist, Zen and Hindu traditions. • The National World War I Museum and Memorial, located in Kansas City, which will establish an endowed curator position on faith and religion, strengthen public programming on religion in a time of war and enhance gallery and virtual exhibitions. • The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which will develop an exhibition that explores universal experiences of mortality alongside distinctive ways that religious beliefs and practices help communities respond to death. • The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, which will establish an endowment to make religion a central component of the museum’s work, incorporate religion into the re-installation of its Native American Gallery, and help with the development and mounting of an exhibition focused on religion and the American West.
Lilly Endowment launched the Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative in 2019 when it awarded planning grants totaling nearly $2 million to organizations to help them explore how programming in religion could further their institutional missions. Many organizations used the planning period to examine how religious themes were already present in their collections and design projects that would enhance and complement their current activities. Since the planning activities occurred during COVID-19, many of the organizations experimented with and ultimately proposed increasing their digital capacities to interpret religion and reach additional audiences.
The Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative builds directly on insights and experiences from previous grants to museums and cultural organizations to mount exhibitions that lift up and explore religious themes. Past grant recipients include the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, and the International African American Museum located in Charleston, S.C.
Among the current grant recipients, the Smithsonian Institution is receiving a nearly $8 million grant to enable the National Museum of American History to establish its Center for the Public Understanding of Religion in American History and create a dedicated gallery featuring the impact of religion on American history. Through the Center, the Smithsonian also will establish a network for museums and other cultural institutions to learn from and with each other about their work in religion.
Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly, Sr. and his sons Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. Although the gifts of stock remain a financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion and maintains a special commitment to its founders’ hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. The Endowment also funds significant programs throughout the United States, especially in the field of religion. While the primary aim of its grantmaking in religion focuses on strengthening the leadership and vitality of Christian congregations in the United States, the Endowment also seeks to foster public understanding about religion and lift up in fair, accurate and balanced ways the contributions that people of all faiths and diverse religious communities make to our greater civic well-being.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Religion News Service or Religion News Foundation.
(Photo: REUTERS / Joe Penney)A church is seen guarded by soldiers behind sandbags, in Maiduguri, Nigeria May 23, 2014. Christian houses of worship are guarded by military soldiers at all times in Maiduguri.
The United States has included Nigeria on a blacklist of nations where “systematic, ongoing, egregious religious freedom violations” are an issue of concern.
The move could pave the way for potential sanctions in the future, Deutsche Welle reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Dec. 7, that the West African nation, an ally of the US, was among “countries of concern under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.”
“The US is unwavering in its commitment to religious freedom. No country or entity should be allowed to persecute people with impunity because of their beliefs,” Pompeo said in a tweet.
“These annual designations show that when religious freedom is attacked, we will act.”
Pompeo did not elaborate on the reasons for including Nigeria, which has a delicate balance between Muslims and Christians, Voice of America reported.
Pompeo notably did not include India, which has a growing relationship with Washington, said VOA.
The U.S. Secretary of State was infuriated by a recommendation from the Commission on International Religious Freedom to include the secular but Hindu-majority nation over what it called a sharp downward turn under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“The United States is designating Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, the DPRK (North Korea), Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan as Countries of Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, as amended, for engaging in or tolerating ‘systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.'”
Nigeria was first designated as a CPC in 2019 by the State Department due to its treatment of the Shi’a community leader Ibrahim ZakZaky. ZakZaky has been in detention since 2015, despite a court ordering his release, International Christian Concern reported.
The West African nation has denied all allegations of religious freedom violations though.
Lai Mohammed, its Minister of Information and Culture released a statement in Abuja on Dec. 8 where he said that the listing was a difference in opinion between the two nations.
He said, “Nigeria does not engage in religious freedom violation, neither does it have a policy of religious persecution. Victims of insecurity and terrorism in the country are adherents of Christianity, Islam and other religions.”
Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa with some 214 million people with just over 50 percent of them thought to be Muslims and about 46 percent Christians.
U.S. law says that nations on the blacklist must make improvements or face sanctions including losses of U.S. government assistance.
However, the administration can waive such actions.
The US State Department found that eight out of 10 people around the world face restrictions on religious freedom.
“Where religious freedom is absent, terrorism and violence fester. Our advocacy for religious communities abroad helps to ensure the protection and prosperity of Americans at home,” the State Department said in a statement.
While the designations relate to government actions, the State Department had already listed Nigeria’s Boko Haram as a terrorist group, AFP reported.
The militants began an insurgency in 2009 in northeastern Nigeria that has since spread to neighboring countries, killing more than 36,000 people and forcing 3 million to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.
Under U.S. law, nations on the blacklist must make improvements or face sanctions, including losses of U.S. government assistance, although the administration can waive actions.
17.5 billion EUR to support people, the economy and the environment for 2021-2027
Investments in fossil fuels will not receive funding
Focus on least developed regions, outermost regions, islands
On Wednesday, EP and Council reached a provisional agreement on setting up the Just Transition Fund to mitigate the social impact of greening the economy.
The Just Transition Fund (JTF), worth 17.5 billion EUR, is one of the EU’s key tools to support regions in the transition towards climate neutrality by 2050.
During their talks, EU institutions agreed to broaden its scope to also fund micro-enterprises, universities and public research institutions, digital innovation and activities in the areas of education and social inclusion. Investments in renewable energy and energy storage technologies, investments in energy efficiency and heat production for renewables-based district heating, smart and sustainable local mobility will also be financed.
The decommissioning or construction of nuclear power stations, activities linked to tobacco products and investment related to the production, processing, transport, distribution, storage or combustion of fossil fuels cannot be funded through the JTF.
At the initiative of the Parliament, a “Green Rewarding Mechanism” will be introduced, if JTF resources are increased after 31 December 2024. The additional resources will be distributed among member states, with those that succeed in reducing greenhouse gas emitted by their industrial facilities receiving more funding.
Other key measures agreed
In their territorial just transition plans, member states have to focus on supporting outermost regions and islands and earmark specific amounts from their national allocations;
Businesses in difficulty may receive support in compliance with temporary EU state aid rules established to address exceptional circumstances;
Resources may be transferred from other cohesion funds on a voluntary basis;
The proportion of the investments to be provided by EU funding (co-financing) is set at maximum of 85% for less developed regions, 70% for transition regions and 50% for more developed regions.
Quote
Rapporteur Manolis Kefalogiannis (EPP, GR) said: “The European Parliament gave a strong political signal: the social, economic and environmental impact of the energy transition in the most affected regions must be addressed. We took a pragmatic approach that will allow us to move into a new green era without leaving anyone behind.”
Next steps
Parliament and Council are now expected to endorse the content of the agreement.
Background
The Commission published in January 2020 a legislative proposal on the Just Transition Fund (JTF), the first legislative proposal implementing the priorities set out in the European Green Deal, followed in May by an amended proposal containing an increase of the Fund’s resources. In July, the European Council set the financial envelope of the JTF at EUR 7.5 billion from the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework, supplemented by EUR 10 billion from the EU Recovery Instrument.
AT THE start of every Kyogle Council meeting, the councillors recite a prayer.
“Almighty God, Ruler of all the Nations, we ask for your blessing upon this Meeting of Council. Give us your wisdom to work in harmony and direct and prosper all that we do to the advancement of your glory and the true welfare of the People of the Council Area. Amen.”
But in 2020, and given the diversity of residents, is it still appropriate?
Cr Janet Wilson thinks it’s time for a change.
At next week’s council meeting, she will put forward a notice of motion to update the council prayer.
If her fellow councillors agree, it would be changed to this:
“We seek guidance as we come together to make decisions in the best interest of our communities which support the development of a peaceful and just environment to enable our people to thrive and live purposeful lives”.
She said it would reflect the modern and diverse community and would “respect and support our secular democracy”.
“Council has a choice under the Act to discontinue or update the opening prayer,” Cr Wilson wrote in her rationale for the notice of motion.
“The purpose of this section of the Act is to provide for a coming together of the council body for decision making around matters set out on the agenda.
“Most councils have abandoned the practice of opening with a prayer.”
“In Western Australia, the High Court ruled the prayer as unlawful.
“To avoid having to change the Code of Meeting practice, an updating of language is proposed.
“The current language is 19th century English which is unsuitable for a secular democracy in 2021 and beyond.”
What do other Northern Rivers councils do?
● Richmond Valley: Acknowledgement of country followed by a council prayer
● Ballina Shire: National Anthem followed by acknowledgement of country
● Lismore: Acknowledgement of country and “pause for personal reflection”
LAURINBURG — This holiday season the Scotland County Memorial Library is working to make checking out books a bit easier for parents.
The library has begun to do “Book Bundles,” which include several books that fall under one theme for a quick and easy checkout process.
“Winter is our main theme right now,” said Youth Services Librarian Jenna Knight. “It’s a great thing for parents who are wanting to get some books for their children and create some new holiday traditions.”
Knight added you must have a library card to check out the bundles, but if you don’t have one staff would be happy to help set you up with one so you can check a bundle out.
“We started this one Dec. 2 and parents and guardians have already been coming in and checking the bundles out,” Knight said. “And if you want a specific theme that we might not have out we’re offering custom bundles as well. All you need to do is call or email and we’d be happy to get your bundle set up for you.”
The custom bundles can also be used to create bundles for older children, who might want to be reading on their own.
“The bundles are all picture books so they’re meant to be read together,” Knight said. “But if you want some easy reader books, we can do so by making a custom bundle.”
The library’s hours are Monday to Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
For information contact Youth Services Librarian Jenna Knight at 910-276-0563, Ext. 5, or email her at [email protected]
Reach Katelin Gandee at [email protected] To support The Laurinburg Exchange, subscribe here: https://www.laurinburgexchange.com/subscribe.
… that portray the role of religion in the society.
Smithsonian … the Public Understanding of Religion in American History and … focusing on the influence of religion in American history and … and appreciate the significant impact religion has had and continues …
As European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) and myself as a human rights lawyer have witnessed and have been dealing with cases of discrimination against religious and spiritual minorities and their members too.
More than once fiscal and tax issues have been used by governments to the detriment of some groups in order to stop their activities, for instance, when the groups where growing too fast or when they were disliked by the authorities.
At times these groups are denied the tax exempt status, if such a system is implemented in the country, or the status is revoked after being enjoyed for some time.
This has happened also in Western countries, not only outside Europe as someone may think.
Taiwan is now a full democracy whose present status stems from a complicate past; but after all, the times of martial law have gone since long.
Taiwan is a great country that I was glad to visit more than once, and where I had also the pleasure to teach a course on Human Rights, Minority Law and Freedom of Religion and Belief at Soochow University, back in 2012.
I was impressed by the cultural, religious and spiritual diversity of Taiwan where, in the same building, worship places of different religions can be found. One next to the other. Literally.
Tai Ji Men and the Fiscal Justice against a spiritual movement in Taiwan 2
The tax case involving the Tai Ji Men community has lasted for far too long. In fact even though all the tax claims have been erased in Court, and no claim should exist anymore, however a tax claim for year 1992 is still maintained by the Tax Office despite the Court judgments in favour of Tai Ji Men, and which risks to damage Tai Ji Men, after having cost them millions Taiwanese dollars in trials costs.
The ongoing TJM case is unacceptable generally speaking, and also very difficult to understand from a legal point-of-view.
Basing on the legal principle of “Estoppel”, it cannot be argued or asserted that Tai Ji Men have to pay taxes for the disputed year 1992 as there should be no dispute at all, being this a clear contradiction, especially, if we take into account the other principle of “legitimate expectation” (or legal certainty) according to which those who act in good faith on the basis of law as it is or seems to be, should not be frustrated in their expectations.
As European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) and I personally hope and wish that this case can be concluded in the best possible way, honouring Tai Ji Men and also honouring Taiwan’s democratic achievements and commitments for the safeguard of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Our expectation is that Taiwan will honour these principles and by complying with them will finally fully meet all legal expectations of Tai Ji Men in this matter.
