PAMBAZUKA NEWS 212: Fighting for the rights of Africa's refugees: World Refugee Day 2005
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 212: Fighting for the rights of Africa's refugees: World Refugee Day 2005
Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was appointed on Wednesday as South Africa's second-in-command after the sacking of former deputy president Jacob Zuma last week. Mlambo-Ngcuka is the country's first female vice-president and has been a member of parliament since 1994.
EDITORIAL: World Refugee Day took place on June 20 and is followed by World Refugee Week from 20-26 June. The articles in our Editorial section this week focus on the situation of refugees in Africa.
- Refugee academic and activist Barbara Harrell-Bond answers questions on the situation of refugees in Africa
- Aryah Somers examines the dilemmas facing refugee minors in Cairo and concludes that much more needs to be done
- Richard Carver reviews a new book “Rights in Exile’, concluding that it sets the terms of the refugee debate
COMMENT & ANALYSIS:
- Issa Shivji on the beastly face of capitalism
- Gerald Caplan offers a Canadian view of the Live 8 concerts and explains why he is nervous about Tony Blair’s crocodile tears for Africa
- Helping the West to wean itself of African aid would be “a great leap forward for humanity”, writes Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie
LETTERS: Irunguh Houghton provides a rejoinder to last weeks critique of GCAP by Patrick Bond, Dennis Brutus and Virginia Setshedi
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Keep Walter Rodney alive, says Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION AGAINST POVERTY: News from around the continent on African Day of the Child activities; Nine-year old sends SMS to G8 leaders on poverty; Tanzania social watch country forum
CONFLICTS & EMERGENCIES: G8 arms exports fuelling poverty and human rights abuses; Oil discovery in Darfur adds new twist
HUMAN RIGHTS: Canada to look into human rights allegations against mining firm in DRC
REFUGEES & FORCED MIGRATION: Integrating refugees locally could be a durable solution
WOMEN & GENDER: Law Reform And The Case Of Woineshet Zebene Negash in Ethiopia
ELECTIONS&GOVERNANCE: Good governance; whose governance?
DEVELOPMENT: Playing chicken with the IMF in Ghana
CORRUPTION: Malawian President benz over to fight food shortages
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: Women AIDS activists' advocacy for an equal voice
EDUCATION: Post-conflict education: what are the chances?
ENVIRONMENT: Communities Sue Shell to Stop Nigerian Gas Flaring in Nigeria
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Information on the Progressive African Library & Information Activists’ Group
AND MORE…links to news on Advocacy, Internet and Technology, Courses, Jobs and Books.
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The purpose of these grants is to enable women and their families to re-establish and transform their lives and their communities in rural areas after years of devastating conflict in Casamance and the Mano River region. We aim to do this by supporting existing community organizations with established programs of work, as well as initiatives that bring a fresh approach and creativity to addressing the challenges faced by rural women, their families and communities.
L'objet de ces subventions est de permettre aux femmes et a leurs familles de retablir et de transformer leurs vies et leurs communautes dans des zones rurales apres des annees d'un conflit devastateur en Casamance et dans la region du fleuve Mano. Nous avons l'intention de realiser cela en apportant un soutien a des organismes communautaires existants disposant de programmes de travail etablis, mais aussi a l'aide d'initiatives temoignant d'une demarche et d'une creativite nouvelles sur la facon de repondre aux defis auxquels sont confrontes les femmes rurales, leurs familles et leurs communautes.
The next meeting of the most powerful nations in the world is set to take place this July in Scotland. However, the billions of people most affected by the policies and decisions of the G8 will not be present to make their voices heard. Raised Voices aims to create vital space for some of those voices of the absent majority – unmediated and uncensored. This set of filmed testimonies is available to watch online.
Caught between the need to dismiss the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and remind us of the valuable and important actions of social movements, Bond, Brutus and Setshedi's article in the last issue of Pambazuka News almost missed a great opportunity to create a bridge for dialogue.
The characterization of the GCAP's leadership as naive about the global political economy, the importance of social movements and the interests that control trans-national capital and international finance and trade organizations is misplaced. Many of us in the alliance would agree with the structural analysis in the article. We would find common ground (perhaps) in the analysis that the crushing reality of power inequalities, absolute poverty, conflict and human rights denial combine to produce gross injustices globally.
Less agreeable may be, is that a confluence of global policy processes over 2005 combine with high policy rhetoric and mass expectation to provide the conditions for a mass global constituency for change. 2005 is simply, a moment for broad based mobilization.
GCAP is organized around four core pillars; 100% debt cancellation, increased and better quality aid, trade justice and democratic and responsive domestic governance. The article singled out only some of GCAP demands linking them with some fairly eclectic and "out of context" references over the last 5 years. It would be important to note also that GCAP has called explicitly against imposed conditionality and for the realization of fundamental entitlements and basic rights as a way of eradicating absolute poverty. This framework resonates with the positions of many of the movements, organizations and networks named in the article. Nevertheless, it is true that GCAP does not call for the abolition of global capitalism or global institutions of finance and trade.
GCAP is a broad platform and includes many shades of opinion. For this reason, criticisms from within (and without) that strengthen our theory-action (praxis) can only be welcome. However, divisive and paternalistic language ("many excellent African organisations have joined the campaign, but have they fully applied their minds, and social-change instincts?") will defeat the objective of criticism - to improve, to strengthen. The analogy of white-bands as a "symbol of collaborators to apartheid" was tenuous but deliberately destructive, particularly to the colleagues in South Africa. Lastly, I resist the temptation to parry the allegations leveled against Oxfam as we have done this elsewhere (see www.oxfam.org for a response to the New Stateman article).
Yet, important and strategic questions are provoked by Bond etal's article. Have the campaigns started to make life better for poor people in Africa, Asia and Latin America? What strategies can keep the campaign rooted in real ground level struggles and ensure the involvement of people living in poverty in our campaigns?
Since September 2004, this Alliance has grown from the original 50 organisations that came together in Johannesburg to over a hundred national coalitions of over 1000 organizations and networks across the world. GCAP members co-organized two weeks in April on trade and education (this included members of Another World is for Sale and Global Campaign for Education). With a base among trade unions, NGOs, youth and women's networks it has been able to mobilize thousands of people through simultaneous events, influence public opinion through mass media and project the symbol of the white-band.
African organizations not mainstream NGOs are in the forefront of the work in Africa. On June 16th, mobilization of children and youth took place in countries as far as Zambia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Kenya among others. While northern attention has been on live8, over one hundred African musicians, sportspeople and celebrities (Lucky Dube, Salif Keita, Baaba Maal, Oumou Sangare among others) have endorsed the campaign. Thousands of ordinary men, women and children wore white-bands and declared their commitment to GCAP positions. July 2nd looks set to see this impact multiplied by a factor of ten.
Yet it is clear in June, that effective outreach among the productive classes in our societies is still but an aspiration. We need to accelerate the involvement of teachers and health-workers unions to demand changes in the light of the debt cancellation victories and farmers to challenge the inadequacy of state protection from rice, sugar and cotton dumping and lack of effective public support for agriculture among others. What about the unemployed, pastoralists, women, youth? Sweet will be the victory when at this level, we can see growing confidence, organisation and self-representation in the corridors of power and policy by some of these groups. Sweet also, will be the moment when GCAP can look back and identify 100 new leaders that emerged from our work. It is only this context that will safeguard the gains of the recent victories around debt cancellation and aid. In the next few weeks, we must consciously develop strategies to nurture this.
Thousands of kilometers in any direction from Edinborough on July 2nd, millions of people will demonstrate for set of global policy and practise changes. If your conscience does not allow you to go to Gleneagles, I invite you to join us in any of the cities and rural settlements around Dhaka, New Delhi, Tripoli, Johannesburg, Maputo, Dar es Salaam, Lusaka and Montevideo with or without a white band. There is space for us all.
Njooni pamoja Patrick, Dennis and Virginia!
Irungu Houghton is a Kenyan working as Pan Africa Policy Advisor for Oxfam GB.
Send comments to [email protected]
Civicus in Johannesburg, international secretariat of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, is shortly to announce that there will be a concert in Johannesburg called Africa Standing Tall against Poverty. The concert will take place in Mary Fitzgerald Square between 12.00 and 19.30 p.m. The concert is the first in a series of three that will be staged on the African continent the others will take place in Ghana and Kenya. The July 2nd. concert will be performed live and linked to the Live8 concerts which will be performed in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Philadelphia, Canada and possibly in Russia. All the concerts share the same objective, to raise the issues of debt, trade and aid ahead of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, with a view to G8 leaders taking policy decisions that could significantly alleviate poverty.
This book is a collection of trenchant editorials from Pambazuka News, a weekly electronic newsletter on social justice in Africa. The editorials were published in 2004 on the organisation’s website, which has established a reputation of telling like it is when it comes to issues impinging on the development of Africa.
Like Africa Week magazine (which publishes not only on the web but in hard copy form), Pambazuka is out to bat for Africa. It carries commentaries and analyses on topical issues relating to the continent. In the current climate of Western dominance of global news dissemination, Pambazuka is truly providing a voice for Africa.
The publishers of this great collection are based in Dar es Salaam and they have done a great job to get this book out. Covering such topics as the World Bank, Darfur, Rwanda, and the rights of women in Africa, it is a veritable source of informed comment on matters that Africans feel strongly about.
Africans or others, tired of the Western media’s blinkered coverage of African issues, would do well to get a copy of this book, which will offer them better insights into the continent.
You can order copies of the book from http://www.africanbookscollective.com/ or [email protected]
The Egyptian government has detained hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members solely for exercising their rights to freedom of speech, association and assembly, Human Rights Watch said. The Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated group, staged large demonstrations in Egyptian cities in early May calling for political reform. At least 800 members were arrested, and more than 300 are still in custody, most without charge. In a letter sent to President Husni Mubarak, Human Rights Watch called on the government to release the detainees without delay.
Publishers of academic books on Africa are looking for an administrator for a small friendly office to start in September 2005. Enthusiasm, energy and an eye for detail essential. Experience with a publisher, NGO or bookshop would be useful. Computer literacy, including Excel and database skills required. The job entails financial, sales and stock-keeping duties as well as the daily running of a busy office. Hours are negotiable up to a 35-hour week. Salary c.£17,000-£19,000 pro rata according to experience and present salary, and hours to be negotiated. For full job description please email Lynn Taylor [email][email protected] or tel: 01865 244111
This discussion revolves around issues raised at 2 public forums held during the 2004 annual meeting of the world economic forum. Both these forums raised interesting issues about responsible reporting of public health emergencies. Most participants agreed that the public interest had to come first.
The story of West Africa’s transition from colonial to accountable government, as in many other parts of the world, has been long, slow, fraught, and bloody. Far from nearing completion, it is still work in progress. The course of this transition has been characterized by several unconstitutional changes in government, political assassinations and other forms of extra-judicial executions, forced displacement of communities and vast settlements, many rigged elections, large scale corruption, and many wars.
"The SA People's Solidarity Network joins other voices in responding to the announcement by the G8 to cancel debts for some of the developing countries…The so called debt cancellations for these countries will lead to further accumulation of more debts in that these countries still have to toe the line and respond to the demands to open up their economies for more exploitation and capital flights and other related imbalances that come up with further liberalization."
For the last few years the Ghanaian market has been flooded with cheap imported chicken from the European Union and the United States. The demand for local poultry has collapsed, threatening the livelihoods of over 400,000 poultry farmers in the small West African nation, reports CorpWatch.
A report calling for action from G8 and African leaders to help children in Africa has been delivered to Downing Street. The report also highlights the work of the Young People's Commission for Africa, an educational initiative developed by Plan in partnership with the UK educational charity Gemin-i.org. Hundreds of 11-17 year-olds from 52 schools in Africa and the UK took part in the project. They participated in a seven-month consultation to discuss what they perceived as the ten greatest challenges facing young people in Africa.
Debt campaigners need to be very clear about what the recent debt deal actually represents and its serious limitations, says a briefing paper from Eurodad. "There is broad agreement among civil society organisations that the deal doesn't go nearly as far as the overblown rhetoric which accompanied its release. And that it has some worrying strings attached."
The belief that lack of "good governance" might be the main hindrance to economic growth in Africa was firmly set in the minds of the international community following a World Bank report in 1989. Rarely recognised is that the inspiration came from African scholars and that the current use of the concept diverges significantly from their own original understanding, writes Thandika Mkandawire. Director of UNRISD. "For the African contributors, good governance related to the larger issues of state-society relations and not just to the technocratic transparency-accountability mode it eventually assumed in the international financial institutions."
Fighting has broken out in north-eastern Sudan, where government forces are battling rebels for control of a town south of the main port. The fighting around Tokar, some 120km (75 miles) from Port Sudan, began on Sunday. Both sides say there have been heavy casualties. The Beja Congress, which complains of marginalisation, says it has launched its biggest offensive in years.
A former top Zambian official has been arrested and charged with corruption, following a public outcry when the case against him was dropped. Kashiba Bulaya is accused of receiving a bribe of $270,000 to award a contract to supply anti-Aids drugs. The BBC's Musonda Chibamba says the original investigation was dropped on government orders, sparking protests from church groups and donors.
Aminah Mukasa, the formidable headmistress of Masindi Secondary School in western Uganda, is on a mission - she wants to raise enough money to pay her teachers a decent wage. Her methods are simple, brutal and effective - she has all the students who have not paid their fees locked out of the school.
Nurses' and doctors' leaders have called on the UK Government to tackle the "poaching" of overseas healthcare workers, at next month's G8 summit. They say staff migration from developing nations is killing millions and compounding poverty. The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing have written to Tony Blair demanding urgent action.
At least 100,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania will receive anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) free of charge by the end of 2006, Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye announced last Thursday. "The target is to ensure at least 400,000 people are on free ARV treatment within the next five years," he said in a speech before parliament in Tanzania's administrative capital, Dodoma.
The Global Fund for Women, an international network of women and men committed to a world of equality and social justice, advocates for and defends women's human rights by making grants to support women's groups around the world.
The Batsirai Group is a Zimbabwean non-governmental organisation working to strengthen community response to HIV & AIDS. Following a successful two-year placement, the organisation is currently seeking to consolidate its work in promoting community participation within its partner communities and within its own staff. The postholder will also assist in strengthening systems documentation, organisational learning and participatory monitoring and evaluation.
A group of national and international development organizations celebrated the Day of the African Child last week and renewed a call to the Government of Tanzania and international donors to focus on improving the quality of education by ensuring all primary schools have enough classrooms, textbooks, desks and toilets to meet student demands as well as supporting in-service teacher training.
G8 Leaders know nothing about Life
They live in a bubble created by their wealth
Come to Africa and learn of life to struggle before
the sun is up
To feel like life is not worth living
Poverty is the basis of the African struggle
When poverty is gone, Africa will become what it
should be
The world's greatest continent.
- Poem by Sena Anyomedie, 9 year old pupil from Christ
The King School, Accra at the launch of Africa Snaps
and SMS Campaign launch.
The Council for Economic Empowerment of Women (CEEWA) in collaboration with Uganda National NGO Forum on behalf of the GCAP coalition in Uganda organized civil society events for the first GCAP White Band Day, Day of the African Child in Uganda. Over 500 children from within the city and from the internally displaced camps in the war affected districts of Northern and parts of Eastern Uganda were mobilized and gathered at the Centenary Park in the Kampala city to participate in the events and the street march.
Women’s Legal Aid Centre, (WLAC) on behalf of the Southern Africa Non Governmental Organizations Network (SAHRINGON) Tanzania Chapter has organized a two days Tanzania Social Watch Country Forum to be held from 1st to 2nd July 2005 at the Karimjee Hall to contribute and support the Global Campaign on the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP).
To mark World Refugee Day organizers of the annual African Diaspora & Development Day (ad3) have offered to help aid Britain's ailing NHS by raising money to enable thousands of African refugees with medical qualifications to work for the health service. Concerned that 2 July - which is shaping up to be a big day for Africa - would only see African artists relegated to playing in a small village in the British provinces, ad3 organizers, the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD) have called on African performers to take to a "Live8419" stage at The Rocket in Holloway, north London.
To mark Day of the African Child, African GCAP campaigners launched a major publicity campaign under the slogan Thumbs Down 2 Poverty. At press conferences in Johannesburg, Nairobi, and Accra, GCAP coalitions launched Africa Snaps - a series of television adverts featuring Africa's top celebrities including Senegalese musician Youssour N'dour. 20 million people are expected to tune into the "snap ads" in 15 African countries. 16th June, traditionally the date when Africa remembers the brutal massacre of school children under South African apartheid, will also mark the launch of the Say No 2 Poverty SMS mobile phone campaign in several African countries. Messages sent by Africans will be presented to African leaders at the African Union Ministerial Summit in Tripoli, Libya and to G8 leaders in Gleneagles.
18 countries around the world have held high-profile 'send-off' events to launch their 'friends' on their journey to take young people's demands to Scotland or combine their GCAP plans with messages from the Send My Friend to School campaign. Campaigners hope the events around the world will attract further media attention and mobilise public opinion in favour of increased G8 aid commitments and debt cancellation, with a particular emphasis on our collective responsibility to make sure every girl and boy in the world can go to school. For further information, please see: http://www.campaignforeducation.org/
Click on the link below for updates from GCAP campaign partners in South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Senegal.
The fifth objective adopted by the Dakar World Education Forum in 2000 focuses on the rights of children in emergencies. Dakar participants called on national Education for All (EFA) plans to include provision for education in emergency situations. Achieving this goal, however, is complicated by the lack of clarity concerning the responsibilities of international and local stakeholders during emergencies and the early stages of reconstruction. A book from UNESCO's International Institute for Educational Planning examines the co-ordination – or lack of it – of education in emergencies and early reconstruction.
Internal displacement in Eritrea stems from a combination of war and drought. At the height of the 1998-2000 border war there were 1.1 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Eritrea. This number has fallen sharply but there are still over 45,000 IDPs who cannot return home, mainly because of the tensions that persist due to the deadlock over the border.
In a reverse of the usual flow of refugees, the UN refugee agency last week organised the first convoy for 42 Congolese living in Angola to return to their home in western Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Congolese returnees will be living in areas which previously provided asylum to Angolan refugees. Just weeks earlier, a final convoy of Angolan refugees returned home in late May from the same Kisenge region, ending a refugee programme that ran for more than 20 years.
More than 140 cartoons from 36 countries are featured in the month-long exhibition organised by UNHCR and the Association of East African Cartoonists (KATUNI) to mark World Refugee Day. The exhibition also included a caricature competition with cartoonists invited to present their caricatures of prominent persons who were once refugees. South African President Thabo Mbeki, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Kenyan MP Koigi Wa Wamwere, former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright and South African musician Miriam Makeba were among those featured.
World Migration 2005 analyses the effects of globalization, trade liberalization, economic integration and the widening gap between rich and poor nations on migration flows. It looks at the impact of the world's 185 million migrants and their potential contribution to socioeconomic development and cultural enrichment both at home and abroad. And it identifies the multidimensional migration management policies needed by governments to create the optimal return to both migrants and society, while minimizing the abuses associated with irregular migration.
The African Progressive Librarian and Information Activists’ Group (PALIAct) is an initiative of a group of progressive African librarians and information workers. We recognise that current “leaders” in the African information field have done little to break the colonial and imperialist policies and practices in meeting the information needs of working people in Africa, or to make the profession more relevant to the needs of African librarians and information workers. We have therefore decided to take the initiative to set up an alternative organisation – the Progressive African Library and Information Activists’ Group - PALIAct.
Prof Francis Imbuga is best known for his satirical plays. But reading his latest novel, Miracle of Remera, one is left without doubt that the writer is equally a good novelist. This is the second novel on his long list of works, the first one, Shrine of Tears, having been published in 1993. The Miracle of Remera is a simple, loaded story. It is a story of the ravages of HIV/Aids particularly in Africa, where it has struck both rural and urban areas with the same vengeance.
The Charlbury Press, Oxfordshire, 2005, 95pp, rrp £5
This small book of poems and prose is the product of an unusual creative writing class – one that was put on especially for refugees and asylum seekers living in Oxford. The teacher thought the class might help these newcomers to Britain exorcise their memories and tell the rest of us what they had been through. For many, the recalling of their memories was almost unbearably painful. But as the classes continued the students discovered that while writing about their experiences made them no easier to bear, their stories and poems became objects of value in their own right. Although English was not the native tongue of any of these writers, they soon stopped being happy to use just any word; they had to find the best.
Four of the seven authors came from Africa. They write movingly of their childhoods and the lives they have left behind, but also of their thoughts and feelings as they adjust to life in Oxford. It is often not a happy experience. Filda Otunnu reflects in her poem 'What is it like to live here?' on how she's been on all the training courses but struggles to find a job, and it reminds her of the many times back in Uganda when she tilled and sowed the land but just as she was about to reap, her harvest was taken from her. In 'Secretary' Eden Habtemichael writes of sitting outside her solicitor's office listening to his secretary talking to the waiting clients as though she was 'policeman and lawyer, judge and jury'. But they also write with beauty and simplicity about their lives turning around and what love means to them.
The proceeds from the sale of this book go to Asylum Welcome, the charity that commendably organised the writing classes. It would be good to see refugees given further opportunities to express their own voices – and for us to hear them.
* Reviewed by Shereen Karmali, Fahamu.
This course examines the latest developments related to gender equity and considers the implications for the women of Africa. It aims to generate informed debate and develop advocacy and research skills in order to enhance the promotion of gender equity at all levels.
The existence of big oilfields in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region has added a new twist to a bloody, two-year-old conflict, potentially turning the quest for peace into a tussle over resources. Sudan announced in April that its ABCO corporation - which is 37 percent owned by Swiss company Clivenden - had begun drilling for oil in Darfur, where preliminary studies showed there were “abundant” quantities of oil.
Using case studies, this paper explores the distributional consequences and gendered outcomes of the current international trade and financial policy regimes. The authors find that currently, coordination of macroeconomic policies, principally trade and financial policies, is dominated by the multilateral trade and financial institutions, namely the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank instead of the UN-led follow-up mechanisms. They argue that this concept of policy coherence is incongruent with internationally agreed commitments, particularly with the Beijing Platform for Action and the MDGs, and governments are being denied the autonomy to formulate and implement people-centred domestic policies and strategies.
It has become a tired cliché that the face of AIDS is a woman's face but it is questionable whether infected or affected women's voices are really being heard loud and clear in the AIDS field. Often, women are the majority of AIDS organizations' members, yet they are usually underrepresented in publicly-visible leadership positions. Women are on the margins of AIDS activism yet they want to move to the strategic centre of decision-making, policy-making, and addressing the media about AIDS activist campaigns.
Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade, one of the main promoters of the ambitious program for African development known as Nepad, argued on Monday that the program's headquarters in Johannesburg should be closed as a waste of money. "They are spending money for nothing; they should close that office," Wade said. "Since Nepad was founded (in 2001), its officials have spent $15m; they have not moved anything forward an inch and they will not move anything forward."
On 9 May 2005 the new Ethiopian Penal Code finally came into effect, which removed the marital exemption for abduction and rape. Both abduction and rape are criminal offences under Ethiopian law, but Articles 558 and 599 of the 1957 Ethiopian Penal Code had provided that in the event of subsequent marriage to his victim, the perpetrator was exempt from criminal responsibility for these crimes. Equality Now launched its campaign in March 2002, calling on the Ethiopian Government to comply with the sex equality provisions of its own Constitution and international law by abolishing this legal exemption. The campaign highlighted the case of Woineshet Zebene Negash, who at the age of 13 was abducted and raped by Aberew Jemma Negussie in the village where she lived with her mother and grandparents in the south-eastern part of Ethiopia. Two days later she was rescued, and Aberew Jemma Negussie was arrested. After he was released on bail, Aberew Jemma Negussie abducted Woineshet again and held her for more than a month until she managed to escape, but only after he had forced her to sign a marriage certificate.
Services at Tanzania's largest medical facility, the Muhimbili National Hospital, have deteriorated further after the government failed to resolve a dispute with medical interns who have been on strike for more than a week, demanding increased allowances. "We tried our best to convince the interns to go back to work, but it appears some of them were not ready to call off the strike," Hussein Mwinyi, the deputy minister for health, told a news conference on Tuesday when he announced the government's termination of the services of the striking interns.
The government of Burundi has welcomed the UN Security Council's adoption of a resolution to create a mixed truth commission and a special court to prosecute war crimes and human rights violations committed during decades of civil war in the country, Justice Minister Didace Kiganahe said on Tuesday. He attended a special briefing on 15 June in New York, the UN headquarters, on the preparation of resolution 1606, which the Council adopted on Monday.
The international community should put pressure on Ethiopia to respect a legally binding ruling over its disputed border with Eritrea, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said on Monday. Diplomats have warned that Ethiopia and Eritrea, which went to war from 1998-2000 over the border, run the risk of starting a new conflict unless there is a breakthrough.
Togo's ruler Faure Gnassingbé has announced the country's new government, which includes his own brother, hardliners from his father's military dictatorship and a few detractors from the opposition. International calls to form a national unity government after the 24 April rigged elections thus have finally failed.
Ethiopia's main opposition coalition has reacted angrily to the dropping of more than half of the investigations into alleged election fraud. The Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) says that most of its complaints have been dropped, while those of the ruling party have been retained. Final results from May's poll have not been released while the allegations are being investigated.
Reinhard Mohn Fellowships are awarded to up to five Fellows from all over the world. For 12 months, Fellows are given the opportunity to gather valuable experiences and build networks in a variety of divisions and countries within Bertelsmann’s global group of companies.
Friends of the Earth has reacted with anger at the content of a fresh leak of the draft communique on climate change for next month's G8 Summit which has deleted proposals to fund research and worryingly even calls into question scientists' warnings that global climate change is already under way. The document entitled 'Gleneagles Plan of Action', dated 14 June, has been watered down from a previous draft which itself had no specific targets or timetables for action. The latest draft also backs the use of so-called "zero-carbon" nuclear power.
African nations are refusing to accept US Food and Drug Administration approval of generic AIDS drugs, delaying the delivery of the less costly medicine to patients, according to US, UN, African, and drug company officials, The Boston Globe reports. Four countries - Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania - have told South African generic drug maker Aspen Pharmacare that its FDA approval for antiretroviral drugs had no standing in their regulatory reviews of medicine, and that they have long required a study of the drug's safety and quality from the World Health Organization, officials confirmed in interviews last week.
Women for Change advocates for policies and practices that are gender-sensitive, just and effectively respond to the plight of the poor. WFC also creates public awareness on the rights of women and children and influences policy formulation and change on their development needs as well as on identification, planning and implementation of development programmes.
Soon after independence many African countries took in large numbers of refugees, provided them with land, helped them to become self-reliant and, in some cases, to attain a high degree of economic, social and political integration. Today, however, there are fewer opportunities for that approach. Africa’s refugees generally find themselves confined to camps or designated zones where they are discouraged from becoming self-reliant. Often they are put under pressure to go back to their own country, regardless of whether or not conditions in their country of origin are unsafe or unstable.
Nations like Uganda that host hundreds of thousands of refugees from neighbouring African conflicts should serve as a lesson to the West, where asylum has become confused with terrorism and crime, the new head of the U.N.'s refugee agency said. Marking World Refugee Day with his first overseas trip in the role, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres was visiting camps in one of the most remote corners of the world -- northwest Uganda near the borders with Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Today, women and children remain the main casualties of war and civil strife, accounting for about 3/4 of the world refugee population. Boys as young as eight years are often abducted and forced to become child soldiers. Although the current Kenyan policy regarding the protection of refugees is encampment, there are urban refugees who are recognised and mandated by UNHCR to reside in urban centres.
The Liberia Repatriation, Resettlement and Reintegration Commission (LRRRC), the national agency that is responsible for internally displaced persons and Liberian refugees returning home, has announced the closure of four camps that have been hosting some 38,951 internally displaced people, a decision taken in consultation and collaboration with its implementing partners, the UNHCR, WFP and other humanitarian aid agencies. According to Mr. Dwuye, the camps were declared closed after most of the displaced people in the four camps received their resettlement and reintegration benefits.
Zambia has been hosting refugees for more than 30 years now. In the country’s Western Province there are approximately 150,000 refugees with an estimated 35,000 refugees living in the two camps of Nangweshi and Mayukwayukwa, while the remaining 115,000 are not registered by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and are spontaneously settled. The Zambian Government with the support of UNHCR and other partners has since embarked on a poverty reduction strategy called the Zambian Initiative Programme (ZIP). The programme aims at developing refugee host areas and ensuring harmony between refugees and their hosts.
As part of activities to mark the World Refugee Day, the government of Tanzania granted citizenship on Monday to the first 182 of 1,320 Somali refugees, a UN official said. A naturalisation ceremony was held at a refugee camp in Chogo village, in the northeastern Tanga region, which is home to 472 Somali refugee families.
Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the country have been urged to sit back and reflect on themselves as civil society activists. In a key-note address to a Gender Festival in Dar es Salaam, Issa Shivji, Professor of Law, University of Dar es Salaam, said reflecting on who we are, what are we doing and where we are going does not require any justification. In other words, he queried, are we contributing to the great cause of humanity, the cause of emancipation from oppression, exploitation and deprivation, or are we engaged, consciously or unconsciously, in playing to the tune set by others?
Cholera outbreaks in Uganda have killed at least 10 people, while hundreds of others have been treated for the disease, health officials said last Thursday. The outbreaks were recorded in a congested Kampala slum; in Jonam County in Nebbi District, 300 km northwest of the city; and in a camp for internally displaced people in Gulu District, 380 km north of Kampala. In the slum, north of the city centre, four deaths and four cases of infections have been recorded. The slum is home to an estimated 30,000 people.
Plans to purchase a US $545,000 limousine for President Bingu wa Mutharika have sparked heated debate in Malawi, which faces yet another year of acute food shortages. Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe told parliament on Wednesday that the Maybach 62, made by Mercedes-Benz, was necessary, as the president was without an official vehicle. The car used by former president Bakili Muluzi was involved in an accident last year, and the government intended to pay for the new vehicle in instalments.
A project to manage groundwater and drought in southern Africa was approved by the World Bank (WB) this week. The Groundwater and Drought Management project will cost US $7.5 million, and is being funded by a $7 million grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), with the remainder provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).
Liberia's transitional government has signed offshore exploration agreements with three little-known oil companies, just three months before elections to return the war-scarred West African country to democracy. Musa Dean, the head of the state-run National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL), announced the three deals last Thursday as the international community considered hard-hitting proposals to limit the government’s economic powers in order to crack down on rampant corruption.
Many refugees in South Africa find themselves unable to begin or continue with their education. A 2003 study, the ‘National Refugee Baseline Survey’, found that almost 40 percent of persons surveyed had children who were not attending school, mostly because their parents were unable to afford the fees. Those surveyed also reported that refugee children were turned away from primary schools because the facilities were said to be full, or unwilling to accept children with asylum seeker and refugee permits.
On World Refugee Day 2005, Amnesty International turns its attention to the practice of arbitrary detention and unlawful expulsion of refugees and asylum-seekers. Amnesty International is launching three reports on detention and practices of expulsion. Many of those detained are in search of asylum. Some are detained automatically as soon as they arrive in a country of asylum if they do not have proper documentation or authorisation. Others are put in detention while their asylum claim is under consideration. For many, detention is used once their asylum claims have been dismissed following asylum determination procedures that fail to meet basic standards of fairness.
News that President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether sections of a new election law are unconstitutional has raised concern that Angola's first general election since 1992 could be delayed. According to the official Angop news agency, Dos Santos promulgated most of the laws in the so-called 'electoral package', but the crucial "Electoral Law has not been promulgated" because there were doubts over whether certain sections complied with the country's constitution.
Zambia's ruling party, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), on Friday denied that it had authorised any attack on the media, after claims that its supporters had attacked newspaper vendors. "We are committed to a democratic regime and believe in the freedom of the press," MMD spokesman Akashambatwa Mbikusita-Lewanika told IRIN.
As the international community marks World Refugee Day, a Somali woman's tale of how she helped fellow refugees terminate pregnancies has highlighted the shortcomings of reproductive health care in refugee camps. Humanitarian assistance to people in this and other camps has understandably focused on providing food, water, shelter and sanitation. In the scramble to ensure that refugees stay alive, however, the contraceptive needs of women sometimes fall by the wayside - despite the fact that women may be more vulnerable to sexual abuse and disease, and unwanted pregnancies, in a refugee setting.
With the peace process in Cote d'Ivoire running into fresh difficulties and the rebels once more resisting pressure to disarm, international mediator and South African president Thabo Mbeki has called the warring factions to a new summit. "The president proposed the 25th and 26th (of June) as the dates but all the parties can't make it. Therefore arrangements are being made to find another suitable date," Mbeki's spokesman Bheki Khumalo was quoted as saying by Agence France Presse.
Presidential elections to complete Guinea-Bissau's return to democracy took place peacefully and in good order on Sunday. Early returns showed Malam Bacai Sanha, the candidate of the ruling PAIGC party, and former president Joao Bernardo Vieira leading the field in the country's main towns. Voters flocked to the polling stations in record numbers in this small West African country and voting started on time everywhere.
Despite prevailing insecurity in the east and northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the postponement of presidential elections, the Independent Electoral Commission launched its registration campaign of 3.5 million voters in Kinshasa on Monday. The three-week voter-registration process in the capital city is the first step of the nationwide registration programme, which will extend to other provinces in the next 45 days, starting with the Bas-Congo and Orientale provinces, said Apolinnaire Muholongu Malumalu, the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission.
This report summarises global levels and trends in the population of conern to the UNHCR: refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless, and others of conern.
According to this article, using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to connect rural agricultural producers to markets through global information networks is key to helping advance rural development in developing countries. The author believes that improved access to global information networks and adequate capacity building are essential for African agricultural producers.
Environmental degradation is threatening the health and livelihoods of two billion people living in arid regions round the world, says an international team of researchers. They say that desertification - the irreversible degradation of drylands due to climatic factors and human activities - is among the world's greatest environmental challenges.
The Centre for Democracy & Development (CDD) is an international, non-governmental organisation dedicated to research, training and advocacy on issues of democratisation, development and human security in West Africa. Since it was founded in 1997, CDD has acquired an outstanding reputation as a leading intellectual resource for work on capacity-building and policy-oriented scholarship on democracy, the environment, human and gender rights, security and development, while it has also engaged in interventions through mediation and dialogue in countries undergoing conflict and post-conflict situations.
Save the Children, a leading U.S. and international child-focused relief and development agency seeks an Education Specialist for the Combating Exploitive Child Labor through Education project. It is a $3 million, four year project with the purpose of improving access to and quality of education programs for children in Mozambique as a means to combat exploitive child labor in areas with high incidences, particularly with children involved in domestic work, agriculture, as traders and hawkers and for commercial sexual exploitation.
Agenda Feminist Media Project will have an online discussion on the theme of their latest issue: African Feminisms issue 63. The discussion will deal with the topic 'Sexuality and Body Image', with Dr Pumla Dineo Gqola and the contributors of the issue on June 23.
What an insight! Thank you very much for trying to show the clear picture of this government and the situation in my country. This was what we were trying to tell the world, but the leaders of the west ignored this outcry and as a result many of our brothers and sisters suffered arbitrary killings, torture, humiliation and rape. We suffered injustice beyond what the human mind can perceive and understand.
One thing you have to mention to the world is that the neo-fascism style of ethnocentrism in Africa, as practised by the Meles Zenawi group, is the most dangerous ideology that claimed many lives in Rwanda and is currently brewing in Ethiopia.
Please voice our suffering high and loud to our African brothers and the world that this highly contagious ideology as perpetrated by Meles Zenawi and his group will threaten the whole of Africa and one day we will cease to exist as society but as fragments of social and moral decadence of our past.
I truly thank you for sharing this news, even though most times it breaks my heart to read it, but the truth must be told.
An open source calendar server for schools has been released. With SchoolTool Calendar, a school can create web-based calendars and timetables for each student and teacher, as well as each class, team or other group within the school. SchoolTool also helps coordinate the reservation of shared resources such as rooms and projectors.
E- Knowledge for Women In Southern Africa (EKOWISA) is an innovative regional non-governmental organisation (NGO) whose aim is to generate, analyse, translate, repackage and disseminate locally relevant information and knowledge for the enhancement of better livelihoods by promoting the effective and efficient use of information communication technologies (ICTs).
The re-crafting of critical discursive spaces for debate and transformation on the African continent requires both personal courage and intellectual fearlessness. It's good to be in such fine company....
This website is a space for conversation about the writing of Yvonne Vera, an African Women Writer from Zimbabwe. Vera died in April and her obituaries are listed on the website. Students from a class on African Women Writers at The George Washington University in Washington, DC wrote about Zimbabwe and Vera's books, 'Nehanda', 'The Stone Virgins', and 'Why Don't We Carve Other Animals'. Selected works are published on the website.
In 1963, a woman named Th. Centner published a wonderful monograph called _L'Enfant africain et ses jeux_ through the CEPSI research center, in what was then the city of Elisabethville in secessionist Katanga. Would anyone know her full first name, whether she produced other writings about what is now southern DRC, if she is still living, and if so, how I might contact her? I would like such information for a paper I am writing. ([email protected])
Reporters Without Borders has launched an Africa-wide radio appeal in connection with the murder of prominent journalist Deyda Hydara, which it said Gambia's government has "spent the last six months trying to hush up". Hydara was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Banjul on the evening of 16 December 2004 while at the wheel of his car. Six months after his murder, on 16 June 2005, the organisation called on radios across Africa to broadcast a 30-second spot featuring the voice of his son, Baba Hydara.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent organization of journalists dedicated to defending press freedom around the world, has written to the Libyan authorities to express its shock and grave concern about the apparent murder of Libyan journalist Dayf al-Ghazal al-Shuhaibi, a former journalist for the government-owned daily Azahf al-Akhdar and contributor to the London-based Web sites Libya Alyoum and Libya Jeel. Al-Ghazal's body was found in Benghazi, his hometown, on or about June 2 after he went missing from his home on May 21, according to several sources. Justice Minister Ali Hasnaoui said al-Ghazal was shot in the head and the death was being investigated as a murder, according to international press reports.
Reporters Without Borders has expressed outrage at what it called "an unacceptable campaign of intimidation and denigration" against more than a dozen women journalists physically attacked by police and government supporters and called on the authorities to give them official protection. The journalists (12 Egyptians and three foreigners) were among a large number of women physically attacked during demonstrations on 25 May, the day of a constitutional referendum, by police and members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).
Starting your own company is expensive in any country but Nigerian businessman Chidi-Martins Opara faced a hidden extra cost: the payment of bribes. The first hurdle was registering his small cleaning and pest control company. The official fee was less than 10,000 naira ($75), but Opara says he paid four times that amount in bribes. "You have to give money to the big officials so your papers will move faster. Otherwise your file gets 'lost'," he says.
Former deputy president Jacob Zuma will be prosecuted on two counts of corruption, the National Prosecuting Authority said in Pretoria on Monday. Zuma was sacked last week following the ruling by Durban High Court judge Hilary Squires, who found that he had a "generally corrupt" relationship with his friend Schabir Shaik, who acted as his financial advisor. "This afternoon advocate [Vusi] Pikoli informed deputy president [Jacob] Zuma that he has decided to bring criminal charges against his person. Such charges will be constituted by, among others, two counts of corruption," spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi said on Monday.
Communities from across the Niger Delta, with the support of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA), have filed a legal action against the Nigerian government, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Total and Agip joint venture companies to stop gas flaring. More gas is flared in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world, and flaring in the country has contributed more greenhouse gas emissions than all other sources in sub-Saharan Africa combined according to the World Bank.
Finance minister Dr. Ezra Suruma in the budget speech shattered teachers' hopes of earning at least sh200,000 as promised by President Yoweri Museveni last year. Suruma instead announced a sh10,000 increment on their current salary of sh130,000. John Situma, the deputy secretary general of the Uganda National Teachers' Union (UNATU)described the increment as a mockery to the teaching profession and an abuse of the President's pledge. In protest, Kampala primary school teachers took to the streets to air their displeasure.
At least 60 percent of women in the largest camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in war-torn northern Uganda have encountered some form of sexual and domestic violence, a new survey has revealed. The report, titled "Suffering in Silence", was based on the findings of a joint government and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) nine-month study in Pabbo camp in Gulu District, about 380 km north of Uganda's capital, Kampala. "Research revealed that six out of ten women in Pabbo Camp are physically and sexually assaulted, threatened and humiliated by men," UNICEF and the government said in the report.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 211: Ethiopia: How many killings make a ruler a dictator?
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 211: Ethiopia: How many killings make a ruler a dictator?
President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa has relieved the country's deputy president, Jacob Zuma, of his post. Mbeki announced this to a joint sitting of South Africa's parliament in Cape Town. His move came in the wake of the conviction of Zuma's financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, on charges of corruption and fraud last week. Mbeki said he took into account the basic pillars of South African jurisprudence, including the presumption that someone was innocent until proven guilty. Zuma - who was not charged in the trail of Shaik - "has yet to have his day in court." Mbeki also noted that Shaik was taking his case on appeal and that it was possible the judgement might be overturned.
Across Africa today, the Day of the African Child, anti-poverty campaigners, representing over 100 organisations and coalitions working in over 26 countries in Africa, launched a major publicity campaign to mobilise support for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP): the biggest anti-poverty campaign in history. At press conferences in Nairobi, Johannesburg and Accra, the GCAP coalition launched Africa Snaps - a series of TV adverts featuring Africa's top celebrities and civil society leaders - and the Say No 2 Poverty SMS mobile campaign in 15 African countries. In Nairobi, Kenyan celebrities gathered at Moi Avenue Primary School, Moi Ave to launch the advert and to celebrate Kenyan children's access to affordable and quality education under the Universal Primary Education programme. "This is an exciting opportunity for African artistes to show solidarity with our people and join this critical campaign against poverty in Africa", said Youssour N'dour, one of Africa's leading musicians appearing in the Africa Snaps advertisements. "I support the call to action against poverty a hundred percent", said John Shabala, leader of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Grammy Award winners from South Africa.
In Africa, the Global Call for Action against Poverty (GCAP) meeting in Nairobi at the end of March 2005 developed a calendar of events for the regions to include:
May 28 The Africa Day
June 16 The Day of the African Child
To be added to:
July 1(2) The 1st White Band Day
September The 2nd White Band Day
December The 3rd White Band Day
In preparation for the sub-regional coordinators and partners in GCAP embarked the following:
i) Mobilising the National and sub-regional Coalitions in each of their regions
ii) Developing a list of activities for each of the events
iii) Developing media strategies to catalyze awareness building as well for lobbying and publicity
iv) Developing specific asks/demands or messages for each of the key areas or goals
v) Fund raising.
There has been much written in the British press about Live 8 and the fact that Little or NO African artists are represented at the concerts at Hyde Park, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Philadelphia. There is obviously a strong African cast at the concert in South Africa as you would expect. The Eden concert in Cornwall, UK, - “AFRICA CALLING” - will give an authentic undiluted African contribution to “Make Poverty History”, Live 8 and the Global call to Action against Poverty by the Africans, about Africa for the world. Visit www.edenproject.com
On June 16, the day of the African Child, civil society and the public around Africa will join hands with the rest of the continent and the world to give a “Thumbs Down to Poverty” as part of a global anti-poverty campaign. The various African events are being held two weeks prior to the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, and will signal the launch of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) campaign in Africa. This will be Africa’s first ‘White Band Day’, in which everyone is asked to where a simple white band to show their solidarity with the campaign. The aim is to send a clear message to G8 leadership that Africa will no longer silently wait for others to fight for it.