Pambazuka News 469: How Yar'Adua has improved Nigerian democracy
Pambazuka News 469: How Yar'Adua has improved Nigerian democracy
If the African Peer Review Mechanism is not to degenerate into meaninglessness, writes L. Muthoni Wanyeki, Africa's governments, regional councils and citizens will need to revitalise its progress.
Deeply unimpressed with embassies' inclination towards silence, Alemayehu G. Mariam implores foreign officials to speak out in the face of the Ethiopian government's human rights abuses. Suspicious of the 'veil of diplomatic anonymity', Mariam argues that remaining silent while activists like Birtukan Midekssa are kept locked up simply amounts to complicity.
At an MPLA meeting in November 2009, Angola’s president José Eduardo dos Santos defined the challenges facing his party in terms of three issues: Keeping watch on government, the irresponsibility of government leaders, and fighting corruption with a policy of zero tolerance. Rafael Marques de Morais reveals the gap between dos Santos’ words and its deeds, through an investigation of the MPLA’s extensive business interests. The ‘concept of social solidarity and equal opportunity,’ writes de Morais, ‘applies only to select members of the ruling elite who have been given the task of looting the country.'
Jacob Zuma may have been the only candidate who could unseat Thabo Mbeki from the leadership of the ANC, writes William Gumede, but the inherent danger in electing someone with such 'a colourful private life' to lead the party and the country is that is that ‘sooner or later, the excesses of his private life will so dominate public life’ that they paralyse the government itself.
Agriculture as it was practiced in India over centuries relied and depended on nature’s forces, writes Suraj Kumar. But with the advent of colonialism and a surge in the country’s population, the adoption of new methods of farming have lead to widespread soil degradation across the country. As multinational companies offer genetically modified seeds as the solution to hunger, Kumar calls on his fellow countrymen to use locally produced food and native seeds and help preserve Indian wisdom.
Lucy Corkin reviews ‘China’s Rise: Challenges and Opportunities’, by C. Fred Bergsten, Charles Freeman, Nicholas R. Lardy and Derek J. Mitchell, an assessment of China’s challenges, both internal and external and how this will affect the world in general and the US in particular. Although written primarily for US policymakers, it is ‘an excellent reference for China watchers from any discipline who seek to further understand the complexities of the Chinese state’, says Corkin.
Brazil's mining company, Vale, is preparing to start operations in Mozambique as South America's largest economy steps up its involvement in the scramble for Africa's resources. The remote town of Tete in central Mozambique sits on top of some of the world's largest reserves of coal. With migrant workers and contractors flooding in to take advantage of the opportunities created by this multi-billion dollar Brazilian investment, Tete has become a boomtown, its infrastructure creaking under the constant flow of business visitors.
If people are to overcome the systemic challenges that threaten the future of life on planet earth, we need to overhaul the way in which we manage society, argue Carlos Lopes, Ignacy Sachs, Ladislau Dowbor. In a paper prepared for the World Social Forum in Bahia, Brazil in January, Lopes, Sachs and Dowbor attempt to set out the ‘minimum necessary measures to avoid catastrophes and to guarantee a sustainable and dignified life’.
We can learn lessons from India's unique approach to finance, technology and poverty, writes Greg Mills.
'Society and Governments: debates and alternatives for a post-crisis world' was the name of a Thematic World Social Forum meeting held in the capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia.
China increasingly is playing a crucial role in African economies. Two-way trade between China and Africa exceeded US$106 billion in 2008 and Beijing is the leading trading partner with South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, write Chris Alden and Riaan Meyer.
The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum has issued a statement in response to the first anniversary of Zimbabwe’s Government of National Unity (GNU).
The statement highlights the increasing concern in Zimbabwe over the GNU’s ‘failure to abide by the provisions of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) and its apparent inability to address the social, political and economic crisis still facing the country.’ The statement also criticises the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) inability to influence the GNU to deliver on its promises and commitments.
The Peking University Law School Research Centre for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law ( RCHR) is offering visiting scholar positions at our centre to facilitate solo and collaborative research and teaching. Visiting scholars will be expected to make a modest contribution to the masters’ programme, teaching a one semester course in a specialist topic of their choice.
Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo may be welcome among the world’s most powerful people, who work for his favour behind the scenes in return for lucrative trade deals, but he is less favourably viewed by human rights defenders, development agencies and the citizens of his country. Agustín Velloso looks at Obiang’s controversial effort to obtain wider global respect and appreciation through the creation of an international prize in partnership with UNESCO.
While the Peoples' Republic of China is building the new headquarters of the AU, which has already cost Beijing more than US$130 million a year until its completion, other powers did not want to miss the grand ball in Addis Ababa by demonstrating their 'solidarity' to the African people, writes Yves Niyiragira.
In the coming weeks Pambazuka News will reproduce a series of oral testimonies given by the people of the Anosy region in southern Madagascar. Individuals describe the difficulties that they are experiencing due to climate change, mining and the rapid changes that come with it, food insecurity and no political voice.
In March 2009, Madagascar underwent a political coup in which Marc Ravolamanana’s government was unseated. Until the planned general elections in October 2010 Madagascar is being ‘managed’ by Haute Autorite de Transition (HAT). Since 2005, the mining of ilmenite has become the central drive of the Anosy region’s development strategy, a World Bank programme. This has led to rapid changes in the area on both the environment and the people. More than three-quarters of the population of Madagascar are reliant on agriculture to sustain their livelihoods. As a result, they are especially vulnerable to environmental shocks and the rapid development that has come with the mining. There are stories being told, but these have so far gone by unnoticed.
This week Pambazuka listens to Zababoatsy, a 58 year old, Antanosy man. ‘He feels strongly that the impact of mining activity on the environment has robbed him of any opportunity to “provide a better future for my family”.’ His account tells how mining in the area has had a profound, negative effect on the forest – the community’s ‘source of life’ – on the rivers and he tells how climate change is affecting food resources.**
Ten years ago the WTO-protests in Seattle were the beginning of a powerful re-vitalization of global struggles against capitalist globalization. What is the state of the global justice movement today? Is there a need for a strategic re-orientation? Franco 'Bifo' Beradi argues that social movements were in a deep crisis. His article 'Ten years after Seattle. One strategy, better two, for the movement against war and capitalism' recommends a retreat into monasteries and change of concepts and strategies.
ICRW is offering a post-doctoral fellowship for a social scientist with gender and population expertise at its Washington, DC office. This fellowship is geared toward early career Ph.D. professionals who would like to conduct research within an action research organization and network with a wide range of experts on gender, population and development.
IRIN Films is pleased to release a short film about displacement in Haiti as part of our series on internal displacement entitled Forced to Flee. Filmed in late 2009, just weeks before the earthquake struck, this short film tells the extraordinary story of what used to be Haiti's finest hotel, the Simbi Continental.
The emergency aid industry has improved but must try harder, according to the broadest ever assessment of its performance. Reviewers from the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in humanitarian action (ALNAP) assessed how well donors, UN agencies, the International Organization for Migration, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement and NGOs were meeting humanitarian needs worldwide and coordinating.
If nothing else, President Jacob Zuma’s belated apology about his out-of-wedlock child with Sonono Khoza following unprecedented outrage at the way he has demeaned the highest office in the land has shown the power of public opinion in a democracy. We have also established once and for all that the personal is political and that leaders must practice what they preach where HIV and AIDS is concerned.
I have been following with interest the debate around Zuma and the baby with Irvin Khoza’s daughter. Of course, we know that polygamy is an old-age cultural norm among the Zulu and the Ndebele from Zimbabwe. We may debate the pros and cons of this practice; some say it is disrespectful of women while others say it is a tradition that should be preserved for future generations. Whatever you believe, we need to scrutinise the real issues around the outcry about Zuma.
On the ground floor of a squat building in downtown Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, tellers sit inside tiny wooden cabins, counting out money. Welcome to the Indo-Zambia Bank, which came into being after three Indian state banks and the Zambian government joined forces in 1984. Its 57-year-old Managing Director, Satish Shukla, describes it as a “joint venture of four cultures”.
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Each year, the May 18 Memorial Foundation announces this award in a spirit of solidarity with those working towards democracy. The award goes to one individual or organization who has contributed to the promotion and advancement of human rights, democracy and peace in their work.
The UNESCO Chair & Institute of Comparative Human Rights at the University of Connecticut invites applications for the sixth annual International Leadership Programme: A Global Intergenerational Forum. The Forum seeks to empower young leaders by involving them in finding solutions to emerging human rights problems, and nurturing individuals to be effective leaders in the field of human rights.
The deadline for submitting your nomination for the 2010 Red Ribbon Award is February 28, 2010. The award honours and celebrates outstanding community leadership and action that has helped curtail the spread and impact of HIV and AIDS. Twenty-five community-based organisations will be selected through a community-led process and invited to attend the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010) to be held in Vienna, Austria, July 18 – 23, 2010 where they will have an opportunity to showcase their work.
This edition of the methodological workshops that is on offer for 2010 is designed for doctoral and masters students as well as young, mid-career African researchers based in Nigeria and elsewhere in English speaking Central and West Africa.
On February 3, 2010, the Brazilian Congress approved the Constitutional Amendment Project (PEC in Portuguese) 047/2003, to incorporate the Right to Food as a fundamental right in the national constitution. The Right to Food will be included in article 6 of Brazil’s supreme law that already contemplates other social rights such as the right to work, health, education, and social security.
If man and woman are equal, why should the former be allowed to have several wives while the latter can only have one husband? This is the question the Constitutional Court will answer after listening to submission from a human rights organisation, Mifumi (U) Ltd that wants the polygamous marriages declared unconstitutional.
This guide on positive prevention1 was developed to assist people living with HIV, service providers and policy makers to understand, promote and implement appropriate rights-based strategies for addressing the prevention needs of people living with HIV. The guide includes sections which focus on action points and provides useful information on key issues to consider when developing prevention programmes for people living with HIV.
Schools in Dongo, Equateur Province, in western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the scene of inter-ethnic clashes from October to December 2009, are still closed because parents are worried about security, despite a call for their reopening by the provincial government.
Foreign nationals are being attacked with "impunity" in South Africa, a leading human rights organization charged as the latest service delivery protests turned violent and several hundred residents turned their anger on Ethiopian refugees living in Siyathemba township, about 80km east of Johannesburg.
Reporters Without Borders calls on National Security Chief Emmanuel Edou to immediately explain what has happened to two journalists, Simon Hervé Nko'o and Serge Sabouang, who were arrested by members of the General Directorate for External Investigation (DGRE), an intelligence agency, on 5 February 2010. There has been no news of them since then.
The Oxford University Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) course on statelessness and international law will take place from 16–18 April 2010 and is intended for experienced practitioners and graduate researchers. It draws on the expertise of RSC staff and associates, as well as members of external institutions, including UNHCR. Registration is now open. The for this course is available to download (PDF).
Jabulile Dlamini* is sweet sixteen and has never been kissed. And she is not expecting to be kissed any time soon or to even receive any gifts this Valentine’s Day.
Sixteen years after the Rwandan genocide, many women are struggling to come to terms with the violence they endured. According to the association of genocide widows NGO, Avega Agahozo, sexual violence was used to humiliate, degrade and abuse women during the 6 April to 16 July 1994 killings. In many cases, the violence was meted out before, during or after the women had witnessed the killing of a relative.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) adds its voice to the many in wishing its Honorary President and former President of the Republic Nelson Mandela well on the 20th anniversary of his release. Nelson Mandela whom the NUM conferred an Honorary life Presidency long before his release in 1990 is a symbol of hope to many hopeless and impoverished people across the globe and continues to inspire hope amongst mineworkers.
African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), a project of the CGIAR Gender & Diversity Program, is now accepting applications for its 2010 fellowships. The deadline for all applications is 22 March 2010.
The 2010 session of the CODESRIA sub-regional methodological workshops will explore the conditions for the employment and validation of qualitative perspectives in African contexts. To this end, the workshops will be open to all the social research discipline. The East and Southern Africa edition of the methodology workshops is designed for doctoral and masters students and young, mid-career African researchers resident in East and Southern Africa.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa is pleased to announce the 2010 session of its Advanced Research Fellowship Programme and to invite interested scholars based in African universities or research centres to submit applications for consideration for an award.
Some 15,400 people who fled violence in the central Nigerian city of Jos remain displaced three weeks later and despite dire living conditions, many do not plan to return and rebuild their destroyed homes.
Eight months after the end of joint military operations by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, many parts of Orientale Province, in northeastern DRC, are still in turmoil, says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Attacks on civilians by Ugandan rebels and local militias have left 340,000 people displaced, and 30,000 refugees have fled to Sudan.
For the Foresight journal’s Special Issue on the theme “Is Africa the land of the future?”, we invite papers that look at the potential conditions and the roles of Africa and Africans in the future world. In addition to the exploration of possible futures, the theme of the Special Issue also calls for considerations for robust policies and creative strategies that could ensure sustained transformation within the African continent.
In this week's roundup of emerging powers news, China wary of ICC genocide ruling against Sudan president, Asia unseats South Africa in gold race, India re-draws strategy in African oil assets, and Brazil accelerates its investment in Africa.
The Winter 2009 issue of Food First News reports that last November the World Summit on Food Security in Rome issued a declaration that the world is now hungrier than ever before. Significantly, this is not the result of food shortage, with world production at 11/2 times that needed to feed every man, woman, and child on the planet.
Nigeria will be struck off the list of 'countries of int erest' by the United States if the African nation can meet four conditions, the local media have reported. The conditions, issued by the US - according to Foreign Affairs Minister Ojo Maduekwe - include that the Nigerian government must make a public condemnation of acts of terrorism wherever they occur in the world and for Nigeria to take urgent steps to address security lapses at its airports.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has sentenced to 15 years imprisonment Tharcisse Muvunyi, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Rwandan army, for direct and public incitement to commit genocide in 1994. Presiding Judge Dennis C.M. Byron, assisted by judges Gberdao Gustave Kam and Vagn Joensen, Thursday also ordered 57-year-old Muvunyi to remain in the custody of the Tribunal pending his transfer to a country where he will serve the sentence.
Soldiers have been deployed to help restore order after a resurgent communal violence in Nigeria's northern Gombe state has claimed six lives and left many more injured, the News Agency of Nigeria reported Thursday, quoting a Nigeria Red Cross official.
The Ivorian government has announced the suspension, "until further notice," of the review of voters' list, due to the tension surrounding the process of validating the provisional list. The decision was made at the end of a working session between President Laurent Gbagbo and Prime Minister Guillaume Soro Wednesday evening.
The global rights watchdog, Amnesty International (AI), has called on the Senegalese government to intervene and engage its neighbours, Gambian, with a view to improving the latter's "worsening" human rights record.
Amnesty International (AI) has called on the Chadian government to allow UN peacekeepers to continue protecting 250,000 refugees from Darfur and 170,000 internally-displaced people (IDPs) in the east of the country.
Nigeria's Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has assumed office as the country's Acting President, after the two chambers of the National Assembly (parliament) passed separate res olutions that ended 78 days without anyone being in charge of Africa's most populous nation,.
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's party has called for fresh elections if the current logjam in talks between rival factions of the frayed power-sharing government persisted.
"No disruption to learning" touts a newspaper ad for a new private Zimbabwean school, one of many springing up in living rooms, backyards and plots across Harare.
Local chiefs and Kenyan officials have prevented a planned "gay wedding" in Kenya - where such unions are illegal. The marriage had been due to take place in a private villa near the resort of Mombasa but chiefs took action after it was reported in the local press.
The international peasant's movement La Via Campesina welcomes the preliminary UN recognition of the role and rights of peasants and small farmers in the world. The Fourth Session of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council, who met in Geneva on 25-29 January 2010, adopted the report of the Advisory Committee titled “Discrimination in the Context of Right to Food” (A/HRC/AC/4/2).
Just over a month ago the legendary Dennis Brutus passed away. He became a legend for so many across South Africa and indeed the whole world not simply because of his exquisitely crafted poetry of passion and his never-ending activist commitment to justice and equality for all but precisely because he lived a life of principled consistency. The content of his public legend was umbilically linked to the character of his personal example. Simply put, Dennis practiced what he preached, writhes Dale McKinley.
This new report from the International Crisis Group, examines the rise in tensions before communal, presidential, legislative and additional local elections that are to be conducted separately between May and September. Such an escalation could lead to new violence that would ruin the credibility of the electoral process and endanger a fragile democracy.
The Zuma administration has clearly taken a far harder line on crime, in accord with its populist approach. Central to this is the direct threat to 'get' criminals. Invoking this 'shoot to kill' philosophy has already impacted tragically on innocent lives, writes Glenn Ashton.
Opposition party members are facing increasing threats, attacks, and harassment in advance of Rwanda's August 2010 presidential election, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch urged the government to investigate all such incidents and to ensure that opposition activists are able to go about their legitimate activities without fear.
Nigeria's acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, should take immediate and concrete steps to address large-scale violence, endemic corruption, a lack of accountability for abuses, and other pressing human rights problems in Nigeria, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the newly mandated leader.
Africa needs urgent action on global warming. The consensus position adopted by African leaders ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen failed. African environmental activists are now debating their way forward.
Before the opening of the main conference at eLearning Africa, pre-conference meetings, seminars and workshops will be held on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010, offering participants the opportunity to learn a new skill, enhance their knowledge or gather information about a specific topic. Such activities are not only excellent opportunities in themselves, but are also valuable pre-conference networking activities in their own right.
Clashes between government forces and the Al-Shabaab militia in the Somali capital Mogadishu are displacing thousands of civilians. Reportedly, some 24 civilians have been killed and another 40 injured in the latest fighting, which erupted on Wednesday.
The number of women raped in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where sexual violence committed by warring factions has become endemic, topped 8,000 last year, according to fresh estimates released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has voiced concern about events in Côte d’Ivoire, where the Government has suspended voter registration ahead of this year’s already delayed presidential election because of rising tensions.
Despite fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Mogadishu, health workers have fanned out across the war-torn capital of Somalia in a three-month United Nations-backed campaign that has immunized nearly 300,000 women of child-bearing age and 288,000 children.
Officials from the United Nations health agency and the Beninese Government are urging the West African nation’s citizens to be extra vigilant in observing good hygiene amid a recent cholera outbreak that has already claimed several lives. Since the outbreak began in early January, 131 cases have been confirmed of which two resulted in death, according to Léon Kohossi with the UN World Health Organization (WHO) in Benin.
Saviour Kasukuwere, the Minister of Indigenisation, in charge of the new regulation that requires businesses to hand over at least 51 per cent ownership to indigenous Zimbabweans, has said the regulation will not be reversed.
A refugee rights group in South Africa has accused the United Nations refugee agency of ‘xenophobia,’ for not affording Zimbabwean refugees the same treatment as other refugees in South Africa. The group PASSOP has this week said that Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa are victims of a form of ‘selective assistance’ by organisations meant to help them.
African leaders must cast aside a tendency to "manage poverty" and instead pursue basic economic growth if they want to improve the lives of their people, a leading regional development expert has said.
Madagascar's vice Prime Minister Ny Hasina Andriamanjato has resigned in a sign of growing divisions within the government over how to end the Indian Ocean island's year long political crisis.
Britain and Ethiopia will head a new United Nations panel that aims to secure $100 billion every year by 2020 to help developing nations cut emissions and adapt to climate change, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said.
Although South Africa has almost a million HIV positive people on treatment, actuaries tell us that over 300,000 citizens are still being infected with the virus every year. This prompted health economist Professor Alan Whiteside to remark recently that “HIV treatment without prevention is like mopping the floor while the tap is running”.
Treating herpes does not reduce the risk of transmitting HIV, a New England Journal of Medicine study has found. The anti-herpes medication is dispensed from all South African Primary Healthcare clinics in the public sector and has been added to the sexually transmitted infection treatment guidelines.
The lack of routine eye care was the likely cause of the unrecognised but significant and preventable vision loss and eye disease among 11% of HIV-infected adults attending an HIV treatment site in Kampala, Uganda, report Juliet Otiti-Sengeri and colleagues in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
Corruption scandals are piling up in Algeria, with allegations of nepotism and kickbacks connected to lucrative contracts reaching high-ranking officials. Mammoth state-run energy company Sonatrach still has more secrets to reveal. The courts confirmed on January 28th that two senior managers are being held along with two sons of the CEO, Mohamed Meziane, who himself is being probed for alleged corruption, bribery and criminal conspiracy
As Tunisians prepare to abandon analog TV for digital terrestrial television by the end of March, the government mandate announced in late December continues to pose adjustment problems for providers and the public.