On Tuesday, Peter Maurer, the Red Cross chief condemned US drone strikes outside areas officially engulfed in armed conflict. He warned against a creeping expansion of the definition of what constitutes a battlefield. Since in the context of an armed conflict, drones are legitimate, Maurer said that Washington’s controversial and secretive use of drones was, in itself, not a problem.

Peter Maurer was quoted as saying to reporters in Geneva that the problem arises if a drone is used in a country where there is no armed conflict. Maurer said, “A drone used in Afghanistan or Yemen is a drone used within the context of an armed conflict, and thereby used legitimately.”

Moving to Pakistan, he believes the drone attacks are “particularly problematic”

Maurer on his return from a trip to the United States, where he met with President Barrack Obama, told AFP that “the US is very aware of where we disagree with the use of drones” He said that a widening interpretation of what constitutes a battlefield is the main problem with drone strikes today.

He said that, ”To link the definition of battlefields to combatants on the move is an interpretation that we don’t share.”

The US has been criticized by rights advocates and Lawmakers for its strikes against suspected al Qaeda militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. The US officials, however, refuse to discuss any details of the covert campaign in public.

Maurer says that he had also used his trip to urge Washington to swiftly address the problem of Guantanamo. Since February, dozens of prisoners in Guantanamo have been staging a hunger strike.

In 2009, Obama moved to close the controversial US detention facility, however, plans to try suspects in the US civilian courts were thwarted by congress. This move left many inmates in limbo.

“Lack of perspective in terms of transfer is at the origin of the big malaise that has been transformed into a hunger strike,” Maurer said.

The Red Cross visits the Guantanamo detainees on a regular basis; however, its reports on the prison’s conditions remain private to the US government and very hidden from the public.

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Grooming children for sex is a growing scourge that cuts across all communities, West Yorkshire's chief constable warned yesterday as he met Muslim community leaders at a summit to tackle the problem.

Sir Norman Bettison insisted the crime was not a racial or cultural issue. The type of exploitation seen in cases such as the recent Rochdale scandal, in which a gang of Asian men preyed on vulnerable young white girls, was just one of its many faces, he said.

"I believe there is a problem that is very widespread, not just in Yorkshire, not just within the Muslim or Asian community, but there are girls who are vulnerable and those vulnerabilities are more and more often these days exploited," he said. "What these cases have done is they have shone a light on this type of exploitation.

Sir Norman said young girls were also seen as "easy meat" by some young white men and insisted sexual exploitation was "not a faith or a race issue". "We witness that sort of approach and attitude any Saturday night in any of our towns and cities," he said.

He also warned children are as vulnerable to sexual exploitation online as they are on the street. "There's a growing trend of exploitation, predominantly of young girls, but also young boys, for sexual ends," he said.

"It's got lots of faces. It's got groups of men on the street who are identifying and picking up vulnerable girls, but it's also got people sitting in the comfort of their sitting rooms or bedrooms. Social media opens up a newer means of sexual exploitation."

He said the summit, attended by the Bradford Council of Mosques' president Rafiq Sehgal and secretary Zulfiqar Karim, had cemented a commitment to jointly tackle the issue.

"The powerful thing is the determination and willingness of the religious leadership to be involved in preventing exploitation in the future and sending a powerful message to Muslim communities that this is abhorrent behaviour that should be stamped upon," he said.

"The reassurance that we've been getting is that the communities themselves are very keen to be involved in sending out a powerful message of abhorrence and intolerance at this criminal behaviour."

He added conversations with community leaders and agencies in other parts of West Yorkshire would soon follow.

Yorkshire Post, 30 June 2012

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A campaign to allow Muslim women football players to wear headscarves was boosted on Friday when the chairman of FIFA's medical committee said he has withdrawn his opposition.

The change of medical opinion from Michel D'Hooghe was a key step before FIFA's law-making body could approve two scarf designs when it meets in Zurich next week. "The problems I had (with scarves) were medical, and I don't have those problems anymore," D'Hooghe told The Associated Press.

The panel, known as IFAB, asked in March for further medical advice on whether new designs were safe for women players to wear. Headscarves were banned from FIFA competitions for safety reasons in 2007.

Last month, D'Hooghe said his committee's tests suggested scarves "represented a danger" to players who could sustain head and neck injuries, or overheat.

That drew an angry response from his FIFA executive committee colleague, Prince Ali of Jordan, who has led a year-long campaign seeking respect for Islamic cultural tradition, and creating more opportunities for women to play, by overturning the ban. Prince Ali said he was "quite shocked," and produced medical research which challenged FIFA's position.

On Friday, D'Hooghe said he would no longer object to the designs after "more discussions" in recent weeks. "There is no risk of strangulation. I was asked for a medical opinion, and the discussions I had were purely medical," said the Belgian doctor, who did not elaborate on what swayed his opinion.

IFAB could accept one or both designs -- one from the Netherlands, which uses quick-release velcro fasteners, and a Canadian scarf fixed with light magnets.

However, D'Hooghe cautioned that the scarves must still abide by football's rules regarding players' equipment. "Those aspects are the uniformity of players' equipment and the idea of religious and political statements," D'Hooghe said. "That is a discussion for other people."

Law 4 of football states that "basic compulsory equipment must not have any political, religious or personal statements."

Still, Prince Ali's campaign has been backed by the United Nations, the Nobel Prize Committee and the global players' union, FIFPro.

The IFAB panel which will decide the issue next Thursday includes the four British football associations, which have one vote each, and FIFA which has a four-vote bloc. Six votes are needed to change a rule.

Associated Press, 29 June 2012

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