Rival Sudanese leaders have signed a "road map" to defuse a conflict over oil-rich Abyei region, agreeing for the first time to international arbitration to draw borders. Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, and Salva Kiir, the country's first vice-president, leaders respectively of north and south Sudan, signed the agreement on Sunday. The new plan includes setting up an interim administration for the region and the return of people displaced by the conflict.

Reporters Without Borders welcomes a regional court ruling ordering Gambia to release Chief Ebrima Manneh, a reporter who was arrested by the National Intelligence Agency on 7 July 2006 and has been missing ever since. The ruling, issued on 5 June by the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), is the first of its kind concerning a journalist.

WOUGNET has explored the use of SMS in information sharing and carrying out SMS campaigns around different themes. The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, an international SMS campaign from 25/Nov – 10Dec 2007, with over 170 participants drawn from 13 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, was used as a strategy to call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women.

A decision by a federal appeals court in New York has come as a saviour for many asylum seeking African women in the United States. The court ruled that three Guinean women, claiming to be victims of female genital mutilation (FGM), should not be sent back to their home country, saying there were obvious errors in denying them asylum.

United Nations new report has revealed shocking children rights violations perpetrated by Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and insurgents. A report shows that children rights violations ranges from murder and rape to their recruitment as child soldiers and also denial of humanitarian access to those in need.

The presence of large quantities of ineffective or counterfeit anti-malarial drugs on the Kenyan market is hampering efforts to fight the disease, according to health officials. "Some of the counterfeit drugs are substandard and usually do not have the active ingredients required to treat malaria," according to Dorothy Otieno, an officer in the Ministry of Medical Services' malarial control division.

Many Sudanese refugees are pushed into considering voluntary repatriation if only because surviving in Egypt is tough. Mideng Mebai, waiting at the Waqf Culture Centre for Sudanese refugees in Ain Shams, is one of them. According to the Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA), an NGO promoting the legal protection of asylum seekers and refugees, Egypt hosts the fifth-largest urban refugee population in the world, mainly concentrated in Cairo and Alexandria.

Foreign nationals displaced by xenophobic violence and sheltering in a temporary camp near Cape Town, South Africa, have threatened mass suicide to draw attention to their plight. Soetwater camp, 30 km south of Cape Town, has become home to over 4,000 foreign nationals displaced by the violence that has driven tens of thousands from their homes and left over 60 dead.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga's party won three parliamentary seats on Thursday after by-elections that went peacefully despite fears of a repeat of violence seen in the crisis after Kenya's presidential poll. The party of President Mwai Kibaki, which formed a coalition government with Odinga in April to end the crisis after December's vote, won two seats after five by-elections on Wednesday, a statement from Kibaki's office said.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem looks at the Yar Adua's administration and the political mileage the stolen election has cost him and argues that the only Yar Adua will win back legitimacy is "through public policies that reduce poverty, deliver education, creatre decent jobs for the millions of youth roaming the streets, empower women. bring security to cities, towns and villages and light up all homes, industry and streets of Nigeria."

May 29 was Democracy Day in Nigeria. It marks the day in 1999 when the Nigerian Generals returned the country to civilian rule albeit under a recivilianised former General, Olushegun Obasanjo. After 8 years of civilian politics under Obasanjo, the best that can be said is that democracy remains a national aspiration especially in terms of its capacity to deliver on the bread and butter issues that afflict the majority of Nigeria's boisterous millions. While the kind of brutality, arbitrary arrest, gross violation of the rights of citizens and other excesses that were characteristic of the direct military dictatorship of previous military regimes especially that of the kleptocratic Babangida and Abacha's sadistic regimes are no longer the case, it is perhaps an indication of the impatience of the public or the short memory of the chattering classes in the country that some people will argue that 'Obasanjo is worse than Abacha'.

The current scandals being exposed about the regime of Obasanjo and the financial recklessness of companies and individuals allied to his nightmare team of free loading parasites not withstanding, I do not agree with those who believe that Obasanjo's has been the worst regime Nigeria has ever had. By all means the atrocities, bad judgements and policy hypocrisies of the regime should be exposed and those guilty punished. The fact that these matters are coming to light, albeit after the regime has left office, is indeed part of growing demands for accountability. It may have been delayed but it sends out a message that there is no statute of limitation on abuse of office and betrayal of public trust. Many of those who are now clamouring for Obasanjo's head, or were public critics of his regime while he was in office, could not do the same under either IBB or Abacha. That in itself should count for something. But there are just too many people who cannot forgive Obasanjo for his arrogance and holier than thou attitude.

This year's Democracy Day also represents the first year of the administration of Alhaji Umar Musa Yar' Adua. The stench from Obasanjo's administration continues to hang over Yar Adua and the obsessions of those after Obasanjo and his cabal is making it look like Yar Adua's regime is a mere extention of Obasanjo's. As far as many of these people are concerned no change has taken place and the ghost of Obasanjo is seen looming large and haunting every room in Aso Rock. The low profile personality of Yar Adua and his even lower lustre style have combined to enthrench this view that he is a dithering and indecisive president. Hence the various sobriquets applied to him and his regime: 'Mr Go-Slow', 'Mr Hold-Up', and 'Mr No-Show' etc. They all point to the frustration of the public at his seeming lack of dynamism. It is a regime that has been too cautious and that caution is inducing executive inertia.

The circumstances under which Yar Adua was imposed as a candidate and eventually being handed the keys to Aso Rock meant that the legitimacy issue initially made it too defensive. There was uncetainty about how long it would last and some wrong-headed optimism that the courts would invalidate the robbery of the electorate.

These issues made the government less ambitious from the start, waiting to see what would happen. It was not as though Yar Adua had nothing else going for him. I argued then and continue to believe that he would have won without rigging. No serious observer could objectively claim that either of his two closest rivals had won. He also had a personal reputation of not being corrupt and a record of leading a decent administration in Katsina State for 8 years. So there were people willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the regime was caught between being grateful to the Obasanjo PDP robbery machine which gave it the stolen mandate and robbed public which wanted the new President to distance himself from his benefactors. Neither could be fully satisfied.

It was obvious that the PDP had more influence in the making of the new government. Yar Adua did not seem to have much room for manouvre therefore the party prevailed. All he had was his personal credibility as revealed in his innauguration speech where he assured the country he would be a servant leader and lead by example. That he was not Obasanjo and was not given to what Nigerians call 'I too know' and associated 'Baba-cracy' (rule of Baba by Baba for Baba!) was a positive development. His simplicity and austere outlook encouraged many Nigerians who are tired of the profligacy and ostentatious high living of Nigeria's power elite.

However governing a country as diverse and routinely mismanaged polity like Nigeria requires more than just being nice and wanting to do good. It seems that Yar Adua has become a prisoner in Aso Rock, distrusting his corrupt party and the wheeler dealers across the country. Unfortunately they have been so preoccupied with this that they have not been able to leverage the potential public support and good will from many Nigerians.

The PDO operates like a regime under siege - withdrawing into a tiny laager of few trusted people around the presidency. While this may have worked in a provincial setting like Katsina, it is not working any wonders in Abuja. Many people may want to help Yar Adua but they do not have entry points. The system's core is still dominated by malevolent individuals whose only claim to their position is because they have been part of previous misrulers! Yar Adua's small band of believers' inability to have its own narrative and grand vision has made it become vulnerable to other people's agenda. The most successful in filling this executive vacuum created by Yar Adua's excessive caution is the anti- Obasanjo lobby. While it is important to hold all leaders accountable the same Nigerians will blame Yar Adua for doing nothing later.

Let those who want to go after OBJ do so by all means possible under the law but Yar Adua needs to embark on his own programme very aggressively. A programme that will help launder the stolen mandate through public policies that reduce poverty, deliver education, create decent jobs for the millions of youth roaming the streets, empower women, bring security to cities, towns and villages and light up all homes, industry and streets of Nigeria. He needs to throw caution to the winds and break out of the presidential prison that Aso Rock has been for him for the past one year.

*Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem writes this column as a Pan Africanist.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

One can understand the rage, pain, and disappointment, that informs Pius Adesanmi’s but a cooler, more dispassionate view of South Africa may have cast more light on the issue For all his preamble about making ‘psychic’ reconnection to Africa and escaping the dominant racial generalisations about Africa in the West, Adesanmi shows a marked inability to escape these very race stereotypes. Perhaps this is part of the point he wishes to make but he shows a surprising willingness to reproduce these stereotypes. When he encounters the squalor and danger of inner city Johannesburg he can only recount his experience in the very race terms he condemns earlier.

Does Adesanmi not know that other cities in Africa and the world have mugging, violence and robbery on an almost equal scale. Has he been to Lagos recently? Yet Adesanmi’s fixation on race – all those inscrutable black faces - does not allow him to recognise or indeed consider the new demographic pressures on the limited public and social infrastructure in Johannesburg; a city that draws poor Africans not only from the immediate surrounding area but also a large regional hinterland extending beyond the Equator. Population pressure on infrastructure in African cities built for small affluent white colonial populations are not new.

Adesanmi then goes on to imply that Nigeria liberated South Africa single handed with little help. This would be news to South Africans and many other Africans. Yes, Nigeria did contribute significantly to the liberation of southern Africa. But its role – somewhat belated - was not the key defining moment for South Africa’s long struggle. The frontline states – particularly Mozambique and Tanzania – contributed more over a longer period. Yes, the struggle to overcome apartheid seized the imagination of young informed Nigerians but it also captured the attention of whole generation of Africans, inspiring music, literature, art and politics across the continent. It did not capture of the imagination of Nigerians alone.

The xenophobia that drives everyday urban life and current disturbances are not a new phenomenon and probably have deep roots in Apartheid South Africa. The South African view of ‘Africans’ who come from north of the Limpopo as ‘black’, physically repellent and possessed of incomprehensible and inelegant languages is not new. Indeed the word ‘ African’ is a historically ambiguous term in South Africa, freighted with all the contempt and violence of Apartheid. The conflicts and competitiveness of post Apartheid South Africa have only added new hostility to old contempt ‘Insider/outsider’ or ‘native/stranger’ strife is one of the perennial and defining binaries of African politics. The fact that Black South Africans have turned on other Africans is a sad surprise – we expected more of them - but, on reflection, it is not a million miles away from the ethnic clashes in Kenya earlier this year or the anti- Ibo pogroms in Nigeria in the 1960’s.

Informed Africans from other parts of the continent should recognise that South Africa – culturally, socially, economically and politically - is very much part of the rest of Africa; challenges, dilemmas and hopes. We should appreciate this even though South Africans seem unable to realise this.

In response to , I would certainly not be surprised. When Secretary General General Ban-Ki-Moon took office at the U.N., he announced that his first priority was, of course, Darfur. Not the Iraq War, not the Afghanistan War, not South Korean farmers committing suicide for lack of tariff protection, but, "of course": Darfur.

As the world food summit wraps up in Rome, civil society organisations call on policy makers to investigate the role of “commodity speculators in causing the current food price crisis and stop them profiting from hunger”. Speculative investment in commodity futures has “made prices more volatile and divorced prices from what is actually being produced on the ground”. In fact, the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) recently concluded a workshop to “identify food price induced needs and propose practical solutions to the crisis”. Under the framework of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme the workshop aimed to strengthen coordinated African agriculture and a food and nutrition security response. The AU and Nepad urged states “to honour their commitment to the Maputo Declaration of allocating 10% of their national budgets to agricultural and rural development”. The workshop also proposed concrete short and long-term responses to the food crisis and follow up actions for various stakeholders, which the AU is charged with monitoring. In addition, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has underlined the threat posed by the rise in food prices on Africa’s economic growth rate. With increases in prices of basic food and fertilisers, the AfDB is implementing measures, such as the African Fertiliser Financing Scheme, to ensure agricultural productivity. AfDB has also proposed that Africa entice and support private financing of agriculture, strengthen ministries of agriculture and implement policies that favour women.

Similarly, at a Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meeting of Ministers of Agriculture, Trade and Finance, it was agreed that the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development will provide 100 million dollars annually to support agricultural productivity in the region and invest four billion dollars over two years to boost agricultural productivity, mostly in the form of input support for small family farms. “The ministers said the elimination of existing obstacles to intra-regional movement of persons and goods would also contribute towards easing the prevailing spiralling cost of foodstuffs by ensuring easier access of Community citizens to commodities produced in the region”. This sentiment echoed that of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers, meeting earlier in the week, which called on states to effectively implement the Protocol relating to the Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Establishment.

Also in West Africa, a pay dispute within the Guinean army escalated into violence, claiming at least three lives. The AU Commission (AUC) called on Guinean military personnel to “refrain from the use of arms” and urged state institutions to immediately initiate dialogue and consultation with all the stakeholders, while President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, the Chairman of ECOWAS, held consultations on the situation on the margins of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD). “The meeting expressed great concern about reported unrest by elements of the Armed Forces of Guinea which put at risk the safety and security of the civilian population and poses a grave threat to the fragile peace in the entire Mano River Union area.”

As African leaders return from the TICAD this week, the Group of African Ambassadors in Russia called for more development oriented policies during a series of high level meetings with Russian government officials and suggested that Moscow hold an international conference to discuss ways of enhancing economic partnership and cooperation. Regarding this global courting of Africa, Ken Kamoche recognizes Africa’s strategic global position, but notes that despite the fact that “Africa is more powerful than it realises” “it lacks vision and political instability remains a stumbling block” to effectively use this position for its own benefit. Further noting that the lack of unity in Africa has created a situation where, despite Africa’s potential political power, African leaders are opening their economies for promises of aid that recreate a disempowering asymmetry between the continent and the rest of the world. Muthoni Wanyeki adds “I almost no longer care about the G8’s side of the bargain — to address historical and structural problems with development financing for Africa not just through ODA, but also through debt, investment and trade. What I do care about, however, is our own side of the bargain — to address our governance problems.” Taking examples from Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and others, she notes that the recent gains in civil and political rights are fraying as African leaders attempt to compensate for limitations on basic freedoms with increased economic growth – a situation Pheroze Nowrojee has described as Africans being primed for fascism.

Finally, the United Nations special representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs) commended the AU this week for the draft convention for the protection and assistance of IDPs. While the xenophobic violence that has engulfed South Africa prompt Gwen Lister to question the viability of a union government which she claims “would be meaningless unless Africans are able to treat one another with the respect and dignity they deserve, especially when it comes to refugee communities”.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/378/48550art.jpgWhen my co-Director of AIDS-Free World, Paula Donovan, visited in November, and observed that the war being waged against women “may well be the most savage display of misogyny ever orchestrated in a conflict zone”, she was right. Terrible, unspeakable things have been done to the women of DR Congo, writes Stephen Lewis. It isn’t enough to stop the shooting when the raping continues apace. The only worthwhile armistice restores peace for the entire population, male and female. There can be no satisfaction in claiming a truce or a peace treaty which is soaked in the carnage of the women of the land. If all the peacekeepers were women, and the men of a country were under pervasive sexual assault, do you think the women would simply observe the carnage?
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Three days ago, I returned from Liberia. While in the country, I met with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, with senior officials of the Ministry of Health, with the Minister of Gender, with the leadership of the Clinton Foundation, with the consultant who drafted the legislation for the special court to try sexual offences, with the UNICEF Representative and significant numbers of the UNICEF staff. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to meet with UNMIL, but the UN Mission in Liberia and its peacekeeping forces were inevitably a part of every conversation.

The context of my discussions is encapsulated in the words of the Deputy UN Envoy for the Rule of Law in Liberia when she said, as recently as May 20th: “We cannot expect the future leaders of Liberia, the doctors, nurses, and engineers of Liberia to be brought up amongst men who are rapists and women who are angry, degraded, frightened, depressed, embarrassed and confused.”

She was speaking about the contagion of sexual violence that currently engulfs the country and causes such intense concern. The statistics are horrifying: a recent study by UNICEF indicated that more than fifty per cent of all reported rapes are brutal assaults on young girls between the ages of ten and fourteen. The gender advisor in UNICEF felt that the percentage was probably on the rise, and it’s feared that increases in the HIV rates among female youth will not be far behind. The Minister of Gender showed me figures for March, 2008, indicating that the majority of reported rapes in that month were committed against girls under the age of twelve, some under the age of five, and she narrated stories of gang rape so insensate and so depraved that it reminded me of exhibits in a Holocaust museum. A further survey, of all fifteen counties in the country, found that girls and boys were united in their conviction that young girls were the most endangered group in Liberia, and incredibly enough, that there was no place and no time of day or night where adolescent girls could be considered safe.

Predictably, President Johnson-Sirleaf is thunderstruck by the force of the sexual violence. In a very real sense she is staking the integrity of her tenure on her ability to confront and subdue the war on women.

But how did it come to this? UNMIL has been in the country since 2003 … it has a large contingent of women peacekeepers: it has an Office of the Gender Advisor and of the Advisor on HIV/AIDS; it has gender mainstreaming built into the mandate; both the UN Envoy and the Deputy UN Envoy are women; and the resolution of 2003 which constituted UNMIL incorporated Security Council Resolution 1325 which --- you will agree --- was supposed to guarantee the involvement of women in the peace-keeping processes, but more important, guarantee women protection and security from gender-based violence and violations of human rights.

Clearly all that hasn’t worked in Liberia, where things for women and girls are getting worse. Where did we go wrong?

My own view, and the view of the organization to which I belong --- AIDS-Free World --- is that peacekeepers and force commanders alike have to take sexual violence much more seriously. It is simply untenable to argue that the responsibility to keep the warring parties at bay transcends every other human imperative. It doesn’t. You may succeed in manufacturing a semblance of peace, but for the women of the country, the conflict continues in the most painful and eviscerating of ways.

In the case of Liberia, it isn’t a matter of a contentious mandate: as I said, Resolution 1325 is built into the obligations of peacekeeping. Anyone would argue that when a peacekeeper in the field knows of acts of sexual violence having been committed, or has reason to believe that acts of sexual violence have been or will be committed, then he or she has the obligation to intervene or, to use the language of the day, the ‘responsibility to protect’.

But let me be even clearer about this. Peacekeepers aren’t mere passive observers of the human family. Peacekeepers move into a country; they learn its social architecture; they watch the roiling political terrain on a day-to-day basis. They come to know the foibles, to know the extremes, to know the anomalies. More often than not, they can tell when trouble is brewing. They can intuit when men might hurtle out of control. They have the pulse of the culture. When it unravels, they’re there to bear witness. I’m saying that when patterns of sexual violence emerge, peacekeepers are rarely surprised. In some cases, they alone have anticipated the atrocities in the offing. And with that knowledge comes obligation. With that insight comes responsibility. It isn’t enough to stop the shooting when the raping continues apace. The only worthwhile armistice restores peace for the entire population, male and female. There can be no satisfaction in claiming a truce or a peace treaty which is soaked in the carnage of the women of the land.

Conventional wisdom says that it is the Security Council’s job to set policy, and the peacekeepers’ job to follow it. But that’s too easy. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and its military contingents in-country, should be hollering from the rooftops whenever they feel that their role is somehow constrained. If you need more troops, ask for them. If you need more training, ask for it. If you require a larger contingent of police officers, insist on it. If, in the field, you see sexual mayhem in place, then after intervening, take the names of individual soldiers and witnesses and seek investigation and indictments from the International Criminal Court. If the UN’s Member States won’t comply, then call a press conference and tell the world that women are being sacrificed on the altar of myopic parsimony, or perhaps more accurately, on the altar of Pavlovian sexism.

There is nothing facetious in this; I’m absolutely serious. The United Nations cannot allow the terrible assault on women to continue, while crouching behind the ambiguity of mandate. That, I remind you, is what the Department of Peacekeeping Operations did between January and April of 1994, in the perverse struggle with UN Force Commander General Romeo Dallaire over “rules of engagement”. And there followed the deaths of eight hundred thousand Rwandans and the start of the war in the Congo.

In the DR Congo, it is now estimated that 5.4 million people have died since the end of the Rwandan genocide. That conflict was finally supposed to have been resolved by a peace engagement of January last. To some extent, the battles stopped. But as always, just as in Liberia, the war never ends for women.

In the case of DR Congo, the role of peacekeepers could not be clearer. The words of the Security Council resolution of December 21st, 2007, extending the mandate of the UN Mission in the Congo, MONUC, were absolutely unequivocal: Paragraph 18 “Requests MONUC, in view of the scale and severity of sexual violence committed especially by armed elements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to undertake a thorough review of its efforts to prevent and respond to sexual violence, and to pursue a mission-wide strategy, in close cooperation with the United Nations Country Team and other partners, to strengthen prevention, protection, and response to sexual violence, including through training of Congolese security forces in accordance with its mandate, and to regularly report, including in a separate annex if necessary, on actions taken in this regard, including factual data and trend analyses of the problem …”.

That sounds very much to me as though the Security Council knew full well that things were off the rails where sexual violence was concerned, and this was an explicit instruction to MONUC to get its act together. In that regard, it’s significant that the Security Council went even further: the final clause of the resolution requires the Secretary-General himself to report on the issues covered in Paragraph 18.

To be sure, I can’t pretend to know exactly what lay in the minds of the Security Council members, but these things I do know: Dr. Denis Mukwege, who heads the Panzi Hospital for survivors of rape and sexual violence in the Eastern city of Bukavu, told me when we met in New Orleans three weeks ago, that although the steady flow of raped women has slowed somewhat since the January accord, it continues in shocking numbers; the UNICEF staff in the field agree that things are still in the realm of nightmare for women, who live lives haunted by the fear of being violated, tortured, mutilated, infected with HIV. And who expected anything different, when the countless women who have suffered such demonic sexual violence were not sitting at the peace table last January, and were not signatories to the agreement … a direct violation of Resolution 1325? Who can claim to be surprised by reports from Congolese NGOs on the ground, who say that in the country’s so-called peacekeeping period, women are still too frightened to leave their homes?

When Under Secretary-General John Holmes said the Congo was the worst place in the world for women, he was right. When Eve Ensler, the noted author of the Vagina Monologues wrote of the Congo that she had just ‘returned from hell’, she was right. When my co-Director of AIDS-Free World, Paula Donovan, visited in November, and observed that the war being waged against women “may well be the most savage display of misogyny ever orchestrated in a conflict zone”, she was right.

Terrible, unspeakable things have been done to the women of DR Congo. I want simply to argue that MONUC has it within its mandate to end the reign of terror. If it so chooses, MONUC can also have it within its power to end the reign of terror. Whatever MONUC feels it lacks to protect the women of the Congo --- numbers, police, equipment, training, time, leadership, resources --- let them demand it. And if those demands aren’t met, let them tell the world that madness is at work and it knows no end.

Normally, one would turn to the Secretary-General of the United Nations for help in this difficult situation. But how can we have trust?

The Secretary-General gets commendably engaged when it comes to Burma or the price of food, but where is the same sense of throbbing agitation when it comes to sexual violence? This is a Secretary-General who should be insisting on the invocation of the “Responsibility to Protect” in the Congo, but fails to do so. The defense and protection of the rights of women do not come instinctively to him. This is, after all, a Secretary-General who granted immunity to the former High Commissioner for Refugees, when a claim of sexual harassment against him reached a New York court. I remember that when the Secretary-General was first appointed, he told a group of NGOs that his learning curve on gender was virtually vertical. A year and a half later, the upward climb appears to have stalled at the bottom of the graph.

No, if we are to turn things around, with or without the help of the Secretary-General, the peacekeepers must lie at the heart of the transformation. How excellent that would be. Resolution 1325 would finally be liberated from the dustbins of the Security Council, and women, without fear, could take hold of their collective destiny. You can be sure there would be no vacillation.

If all the peacekeepers were women, and the men of a country were under pervasive sexual assault, do you think the women would simply observe the carnage? Not a chance. And they wouldn’t need a Security Council Resolution to tell them what to do.

*Stephen Lewis,is the co-Director of AIDS-Free World. These remarks were delivered delivered at the May, 2008 Wilton Park Conference: Women targeted or affected by armed conflict: What role for military peacekeepers?

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/378/48552rights.jpg Although often overlooked amidst the shocking images and stories emanating from the xenophobic attacks of the last two weeks, there is a gendered face of xenophobia, says Romi Fuller. Foreign women face the double jeopardy of belonging to and being at the intersection of two groups so vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and violence. This something the country must consider as it moves towards healing and responding to the needs of the injured and displaced.
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In the wave of xenophobic violence that swept across South Africa in the past weeks, more than 50 people have died, hundreds are injured, and thousands displaced. While media reports described the brutality of the attacks on foreign nationals – which have included people being beaten, stabbed, torched and dispossessed of their belongings and homes – there has been little consideration to the double jeopardy of being both foreign and female that renders women especially vulnerable in this deepening crisis.

While the perpetrators of the xenophobic violence in South Africa have not differentiated based on gender or age in their attacks on foreigners, there is a gender perspective to xenophobia getting lost in the midst of the horror.

Foreign women in the townships have been disproportionately affected by the recent xenophobia, not only because the violence has played out on the site of their bodies (through beatings and rape), but also because the violence has been directed towards their homes (through burning and looting).

At the same time, within South Africa’s undisputedly patriarchal society, women have also been thrust into the conflict as a real and potential source of violence between South African and foreign men. Again and again, we hear South African men accusing foreign nationals of “stealing our women.”

There have been reports of rape in the midst of the general perpetration of xenophobic violence. Systematic rape is often used as a weapon of war in “ethnic cleansing.” Although South Africa is not at war, it current situation could be considered a “conflict situation” and in a conflict situation, the sexual violation of women can erode the fabric of a community in a way that few weapons can.

Rape in conflict situations serves to dominate and tame not only the women survivors who are its immediate victims, but also all the men that are socially connected to them by delivering the message that they are not strong enough to protect their women. From this point of view, rape in war or conflict is a means of committing genocide, by destroying a particular group or nation’s identity.

In a country where sexual violence is pervasive in everyday life, it is difficult to distinguish rapes motivated by xenophobic attitudes from those perpetrated because the general atmosphere of violence and lawlessness has allowed for it. Rape can be a political tool of xenophobia; or an act of opportunistic criminal violence against a woman because of her gender, under the guise of xenophobia.

Unfortunately, though reported numbers of rape were not alarmingly high in the recent attacks, it is likely that many xenophobia-related rapes are unreported because foreign women are fearful of the police. Firstly, as foreigners in an environment where the police have a reputation for complicity in corruption, intimidation and abuse of foreigners they are mistrustful of law enforcement. Secondly, as women in a society where the victims of sexual violence are often treated with scepticism and suffer secondary victimisation, there is a general reluctance to disclose.

South African women marrying or dating foreigners may also be vulnerable to attack and sexual violence, based on xenophobia. Sexual violence is well documented in South Africa as a means to control and punish women. Men may rape South African women as a means of controlling them or curbing their agency in choosing foreign men, and as a punishment for their waywardness.

The affect in women is not just physical assault. Many foreign women have been responsible for protecting their young children from the violence, which has entailed displacement to temporary shelters or places of safety where there is insufficient access to food, blankets and sanitation.

“Woman’ (and the associated categories of wife, mother and daughter) is a social position that comes with a range of expectations and investments. Women are the traditional carers of their families, with the responsibility to feed, clothe and provide shelter for their families.

As such, xenophobia targets women and children because they are central to making settlement happen - while a host population may see migrant men as transitory, women and children denote a more permanent move and the laying down of roots.

Migrants are increasingly targeted as the scapegoats for all manner of domestic problems facing societies today, particularly unemployment, crime, and limited access to services. People perceive immigrant women – whom following gender roles tend to be responsible for their families’ well being –as taking jobs and “using and abusing” already stretched public services, such as hospitals and schools.

In reality, many migrant and refugee women in South Africa have limited employment opportunities and are often at the bottom of the labour market. Many of these women hold jobs in the informal economy or unregulated sectors. As such, their access to state services such as health, education and justice is also limited, especially if they are undocumented migrants or illegal immigrants.

Many foreign women are in South Africa after having fled conflict-zones, sexual and domestic violence, and political and/or economic repression in their home countries. The insecurity and violence they now face in South Africa compounds their trauma.

Interestingly, in her book Engendering Wartime Conflict: Women and War Trauma, Ingrid Palmary points out that women, and others, often do not see violations against women as part of political conflict, but instead tend to view them as personal or domestic violations. This means the very real possibility that leaders and service providers leave women out of reconciliation and justice mechanisms.

Although often overlooked amidst the shocking images and stories emanating from the xenophobic attacks of the last two weeks, that there is a gendered face of xenophobia is unmistakable. Foreign women face the double jeopardy of belonging to and being at the intersection of two groups so vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and violence. This something the country must consider as it moves towards healing and responding to the needs of the injured and displaced.

* Romi Fuller is the Project Manager of the Violence and Transition Project at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service that provides fresh views on everyday news.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

In April 2008, after a wave of protests over low wages and high food prices, including an attempt to generate a general strike by many workers and social activists on April 6 and led by workers in the state-run textile industry, the Egyptian government suspended its export of rice and cement in order to meet local demand. This suspension of exports is a response to the failure of the export-oriented economy that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) prescribed for Egypt in 1991.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/378/48557woman.jpgIn addition to the psychological trauma of sexual violence, Miriam Madziwa argues that the violence is likely to have an adverse effect on women's participation in politics into the future.
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There is haunting weariness in Precious Zhove's eyes as she recounts events leading to her fleeing her home in Mberengwa in Zimbabwe's southern region. Clutching at her 18-month-old baby, she relives the horror of the day war veterans, ZANU PF supporters, and soldiers descended on her homestead looking for her husband Joab Gumbo, who contested to be a councilor under a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) ticket.

"I was trying to tell them I did not know where my husband was since it was in the afternoon. They grabbed my baby, this one here and tied a sack around her waist then one of them started swinging her while holding her by the legs.”

"They said she was an MDC baby so they were going to take her away from me. They said that way me and my husband would have another baby, a Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) baby this time, because they don't like MDC people, and they are sell-outs."

While she pauses to catch her breath, she sighs, "Oh not again," and shifts the baby on her lap. The baby has no nappy, so her skirt has become wet. She explains the baby has no nappies or warm clothing. "I didn't have time to pack anything. The moment my husband returned home we left."

Zhove’s story is just one of many I have listened to in recent weeks as more and more families in rural Matabeleland and Midlands flee from harassment, intimidation, and beatings characterising the post March 29 period in Zimbabwe.

Media show images of injuries caused by the brutal attacks. The footage and reports are frightening. Burnt buttocks, breasts severed, limbs broken, and backs festering with wounds from plastic burns. Stories of pregnant women having their stomachs cut open or men young enough to be their grandsons raping elderly women.

Yet, away from the cameras, audio recorders, and notebooks there is emotional and psychological trauma that victims endure in stoic silence. Zhove is lucky to be out of physical harm's way. However, she is in continuous emotional turmoil. Her conscience gnaws at her heart over the fate of her two school-going children left behind in Mberengwa.

"I don't know what they are eating. I don't know whether they are going to school. I'm not even sure if they are still alive. I pray all the time that they are safe and that I will see them again soon.”

“I wonder sometimes whether I should have stayed with my children. If the war vets came back and killed me, at least my children would know my fate. Right now they don't even know I am here."

Broken bones heal with time if the victims are fortunate enough to access medical treatment. The verbal abuse and the psychological impact of the beatings, sexual abuse, and public humiliation will haunt these women forever. It reminds me of the ditty: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can hurt forever." The violence inflicts deep emotional wounds among victims, their relatives, and friends.

An added repercussion is the effect that the violence is likely to have on women's participation in politics. The post-election violence reinforces long held beliefs that "politics is a dirty and dangerous pursuit that only men can dabble in.” The violence gives politics a bad name and pushes women further onto the fringes of active politics.

The majority of women targeted are political activists who openly admit they are in politics to try to ensure a better future for their children. Women polling agents and candidates who contested in local council elections are key targets. Winning female councilors in rural areas are being hounded out of their homes and therefore, being denied the chance to work and help develop their communities.

Added to these politically active victims are hundreds of women who are killed, raped, harassed, humiliated and abused simply because they are mothers, wives, sisters and aunts of prominent MDC activists.

An elderly granny who had fled her home in Kezi tells of the shame she endured during a rally when “youthful war veterans” taunted her using abusive and vulgar language because her son is an MDC activist.

She confided that how unhappy she was to be living with her daughter in-law indefinitely. "I want to be home and not get in my daughter in-law's way. But I am too afraid to go back."

Mostly women carry the heavy responsibility of explaining the horrifying events to scared, confused and traumatised children. They also try to ensure life goes on as usual for the children amid all the upheaval and uncertainty.

Mothers have to answer questions of "Baba varipi? Ubaba ungaphi? (Where is daddy?)" from children whose fathers have fled their homes in the dead of night. These women have the daunting task of trying to make senseless reprisals make sense to their children.

Women are the people who have to make sure that even after houses and granaries are razed to the ground, children are clothed and fed. Moreover, these same women live with the unspoken scorn of close relatives for “allowing” themselves to be raped by war veterans.

Yet in communities where war veterans have set up the infamous “bases” everyone knows that women have no option but to “agree” to rape in desperate attempts to protect their families.

The true extent of humiliation that violated women are enduring became clear when a man from the Midlands narrated the extent of sexual abuse in his wife's presence.

"Every woman who is still young is being raped by these brutes who threaten to destroy homesteads if women do not give in to their demands. We men, know it's happening even though women don't talk about it. We know they are desperate to spare their husbands and families victimisation. We are going to be raising children that are not ours, but AIDS is the real threat in the community now."

While the man spoke, his wife was shaking her head silently, tears streaming down her cheeks. The effect of all these experiences is to traumatise Zimbabwean women into silence, and out of the political arena.

Ultimately, to quote writer Chenjerai Hove in Shebeen Tales, there is the long term danger that if the violence, harassment and abuse continues unabated, "women will remain of politics and not in politics." And that will do liitle to make sure their needs are cared for in the future.

*Miriam Madziwa is a freelance journalist based in Zimbabwe. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service that provides fresh views on everyday news.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

On May 24th and 25th 2008, the Centre for Citizens Participation in the African Union (CCP-AU) in collaboration the Egyptian Business Women Association (EBWA), Cairo Institute of Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), Fahamu, Federation Internationale des Droits de l”Homme (FIDH) and Oxfam Liaison Office with the African Union, organized a training workshop for Egyptian and other North African CSOs on the African Union under the title “Understanding the African Union and Seizing Opportunities for Change” in Cairo, Egypt.

The United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, managed by UNIFEM on behalf of the UN system, issued its 2008 global annual call for proposals to support national and local initiatives working to end violence against women in the developing world and countries in transition on 28 April 2008.

The U.S. Africa Command, designed to boost America's image and prevent terrorist inroads on the continent, has scaled back its ambitions after African governments refused to host it and aid groups protested plans to expand the military's role in economic development in the region.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) 1st Vice-President, Ms Lucia Gladys Matibenga has been elected into the Governing body of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) at the ongoing ILO Annual Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ms Matibenga was elected on 2 June 2008, after receiving 107 votes from the delegates.

Samuel Ebo Bartels, Sports reporter of Citi FM, an Accra-based independent radio station was on June 1, 2008, violently attacked by a group of policemen deployed at the Baba Yara Stadium in Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city.

Tajudeen walks us through the skepticism that initially greated the Obama candidacy, the pitfalls of the hubristic Clinton campaign and Obama's strengths but cautions us that Obama will be an American President who happens to be of African origin. He is never going to subordinate America’s interests to ours where they clash in a fundamental way.
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I must confess that I am one of those pundits who did not give Barrack Obama a significant chance of winning the Democratic Party presidential nomination. For most of December as we witnessed the tragic conflicts in Kenya with two good Professors/comrades/Pan Africanists, Horace Campbell and Okello Oculi, I was most scathing about Obama, while Horace did his best (including giving me the two books of Obama) to educate me, with Okello playing partisan moderator.

Much as I tried I could not bring myself to understand what the man really stood for. He was, and still remains, all things to all kinds of people. Maybe that is his strength. But it all seemed like a David and Goliath duel between him and the well-oiled political and financial machine of the presumed front-runner for the Democratic nominations, Hilary Clinton.

Not a few of us thought that Obama was just another protest candidate who would have his few moments in the limelight and then fizzle away as Hilary romped home to certain victory. How wrong we were! Even the Clintons, the power couple, misread Obama’s strengths. They mistook the political hurricane for a storm in a teacup until it was too late. They threw their considerable weight at him but somehow, in a twist of fate, he became more than Bill Clinton and Hilary could manage. Obama is the Teflon candidate reminiscent of the first Clinton campaign. Nothing sticks as the Chicago senator just ran and ran.

Why did we get it wrong? One, we thought Obama was a Black candidate and believed that the USA was not ready for a Black president. Two, even his Blackness was doubted because he did not come from 'traditional' African American/ black backgrounds and his CV was too short as both a Black/African icon.

The enigma of Obama is in making his opponents and critics underestimate him while he builds a broad spectrum of popular support that eats away at the support base of his critics. He believed in the small ordinary people and organized them into an electoral movement built on hope.

Obama did not have to be a Black candidate. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have both done that. He did not have to revisit covered grounds hence he became the candidate who happens to be black. There is no way he could have become a serious contender if all he has was his skin colour. The initial ambiguities of many African American elite who were used to putting their faith in 'the good white liberal' like the Clintons raised the prospect of a Black candidate without a Black base which the Clintons already took for granted. But the initial disadvantage among the Blacks who thought he was not black enough actually made it possible for him to attract a broader section of White Americans.

Bush has so damaged Americans’ faith in themselves and made America even less loved if not universally hated that Americans consciously or unconsciously expect a messiah to make them feel good about themselves again - and if not instantly loved, at least less hated by the rest of the world.

It is that yearning for the ‘feel good’ aura that has led many to believe that Obama is the man of destiny and the harbinger of ‘Change you can believe in.’ You may not put your finger on it. It may not add up to a grand vision but it is uplifting enough to rouse America. The Clintons misjudged the moment and Hilary has had to fight in such a despicable way that discussing them now leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many former supporters who used to love ‘the lovable rogue’ Bill Clinton.

Though Bill Clinton was a ‘feel good’ president worshipped by many, his wife was not always endearing to many. Indeed Obama is more like Bill than Hilary. If Hilary had not been his opponent, Bill might have been one of the early democrat grandees that would have declared support for Obama. Spousal loyalty (nothing extraordinary considering the pains he has caused Hilary over the years) combined with the power couple’s delusion of themselves as the democrats’ counter to the dubious aristocracy to the Bushes, contributed greatly to their undoing.

In defence of his wife, Mr. Feel-Good became Mr. Sour grapes and a not so skin-deep liberal who thinks he is entitled to Black and poor white working people’s votes as a right and that such loyalty is transferable by osmosis to any Clinton.

Instead of quitting in a dignified way they have fought almost to the bitter end. Those who fight to the finish get finished. Are the Clintons so bitter in defeat that they would actually prefer McCain to Obama?

The next few days will tell. However, now that Obama is the candidate in waiting, attention will shift to whether he can beat McCain come November. Whether he wins or not he has already lifted the ceiling on the ambition of every Black person in America. There is already victory in the symbolic importance of his candidacy. The prospect of his victory, barring assassination (as it happened to Robert Kennedy before being elected or earlier John Kennedy, after being elected) is very real. His victory will see a repackaging of the American dream as a country where anyone can make it.

Initially support for Obama candidacy was most unanimous in Kenya (where many may not vote for a Luo President but are quite convinced that his nephew can be president of the US!), but it is now universally being prayed for all across the continent. If many Africans have their way they will voluntarily become proxy voters come November!

But while I recognize the mix of historical, socio-psychological, emotional and great expectations that Obama’s candidacy has inspired among Americans and also in Africa and in her diasporas, we should have no illusions that Obama will suddenly make America do right by Africa or the rest of the world, for that matter. He is going to be an American President who happens to be of African origin. He is never going to subordinate America’s interests to ours where they clash in a fundamental way but he may package them less arrogantly and may add more honey to the poisoned chalice that any super power dishes out to smaller states - that is unless those states are firm in the defence of their own interests so they can get a better, if not fairer deal.

*Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem writes this column as a Pan Africanist.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

A paper recently issued by the IMF examines the macro-economic impact of the aggregated remittance flows on the economies that receive them. The paper addresses two main issues: how to manage the remittance macroeconomic effects, and how to harness their development potential. The findings yield a number of important caveats and policy considerations, however, that have largely been overlooked. The main challenge for policymakers in countries that receive significant flows of remittances is to design policies that promote remittances and increase their benefits while mitigating adverse side effects.

We, Namibian civil society actors, congratulate and credit you on your role in not allowing and or preventing the Chinese ship, the "An Yue Jiang", from delivering its lethal cargo intended for Zimbabwe via Namibian territory. This is a significant achievement. Had this transfer gone ahead, it risked exacerbating an already volatile situation in that SADC country.

In history, people reach a stage when they say “no” to oppression and exploitation. During the colonial period in Kenya, the Mau Mau liberation movement developed appropriate strategies and tactics of saying “no” to colonialism”. Besides armed struggle, it developed songs, dance and other cultural activities that clearly embodied the message of people’s struggle. Once again under neo-colonialist and globalised phase of imperialism, the same tradition of resistance is emerging in Kenya. Tunakataa! We say no! is a collection of resistance poetry and artwork written by Kauli Raiya (“People’s opinion”) a group of Kenyans who remain anonymous. Kauli Raiya, whose other “Kiswahili underground workers’ organ” was Upande mwingine (“the other side”) were also active in documenting resistance activities of “workers, peasants, progressive intelligentsia and all the patriotic Kenyans fighting for the interests of the oppressed and exploited majority” and its documentation was used by Mwakenya-December Twelve Movement in its publication “Kenya: Register of resistance, 1986” (Nairobi: 1987 – the quotations are from this underground publication).

The government should immediately reverse its decision to ban aid agencies from distributing food to hundreds of thousands of hungry people in rural areas, Human Rights Watch has said. On May 29, 2008, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Social Welfare, Nicolas Goche, issued a directive prohibiting a major international aid agency from distributing food in Masvingo province.

A key report on intellectual property in Africa, which can show how African firms can retain profits, was launched at the World Economic Forum on Africa on Thursday. Called "Distinctive values in African Exports: How intellectual property can raise export income and alleviate poverty", it was produced by an organisation called Light Years and funded by the Department for International Development in the United Kingdom.

Kenya is a few days away from hosting the first ever dreaded and less understood radioactive waste processing facility at Oloolua, located at the institute of primate research in Kajiado district. If the facility is allowed to proceed, Kenyans will without doubt pay dearly, in the same way history is certain to harshly judge the current generation. Why?

Truth is often said to be the first casualty in wartime. But if the real truth is told, it is women who are the first casualties. In conflict zones, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF recently observed, sexual violence usually spreads like an epidemic. Whether it is civil war, pogroms, or other armed conflicts, all too often women's bodies become part of the battlefield. The victims of large-scale sexual atrocities range from baby girls to old women.

During the French environment minister's recent visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Congolese civil society organizations released a statement drawing attention to the alarming situation in the Congo forests and the destructive activities of logging companies.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged the Cameroonian government to end the intimidation of journalists reporting on corruption scandals in the country after at least five journalists and media industry leaders have been interrogated by police in connection with the publication of articles on a defective aircraft bought for President Paul Biya.

Chad has agreed to release all former child combatants held in detention, while armed rebel groups in the Central African Republic (CAR) have also committed to freeing any children in their ranks, a top United Nations envoy announced after a six day trip to the two countries. “I have been given assurances that parties involved in conflict have agreed to free children in both countries,” the UN’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy said in a statement. “The next challenge will be to reintegrate the children with their families and communities,” she added.

African presidents attending the 8th Leon H.Sullivan Summit in Arusha, Tanzania, have cited corruption and poor infrastructure as major obstacle in efforts to raise the quality of life the continent's people. The six presidents are Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Armando Gebuza of Mozambique, Mohamed Abdulaziz of Sahrawi, Omar al Bashir of Sudan and their host President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania.

The media needs to observe high professionalism standards that will pave way for balanced news that carries the truth to the public. Training of professional journalists should be a prerequisite in the media companies if the truth is to be told.

A top official of the MDC disclosed on Thursday that most of it’s members were living in fear of being abducted and murdered, as state sponsored violence wreaks havoc in rural areas. Professor Elphas Mukonoweshuro said the situation in the rural areas resembled a war zone, with the movement of armed bands across the whole of the country.

Nigeria's Senate has approved a former top police officer to head the country's anti-corruption agency, rejecting opposition and rights campaigners' concerns that President Umaru Yar'Adua disregarded the law in naming her. Senators voted unanimously on Thursday in support of the appointment of Farida Waziri, a retired high-ranking police officer chosen by Yar'Adua last month to head the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).