Pambazuka News 184: World Aids Day: The clock is still ticking
Pambazuka News 184: World Aids Day: The clock is still ticking
In January of 2004, two similar lawsuits filed against New York Life Insurance Company for injustices dating back to the 19th century resulted in unreasonably different outcomes. A class action lawsuit, filed against New York Life Insurance Company by Blacks whose African ancestors were enslaved in the United States under the company's insurance policies, was dismissed on January 26, 2004. Just three (3) days later, on February 1, 2004, a similar case, filed by Whites whose Armenian ancestors held policies and were genocide victims under the Ottoman Empire, was settled with New York Life for $20 million.
The Chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights Maina Kiai has underscored the need to approach historical land injustices with soberness. Maina said land issues are critical, sensitive and complex and can only be solved through dialogue. He noted that although land might have been taken away from helpless, ignorant indigenous Kenyans, there are existing realities and dispensations that cannot allow the people to go back to the traditional settings.
By 2010, Sub-Saharan Africa’s total labour force is expected to have shrunk by 9 per cent due to HIV/AIDS, a meeting in Ghana heard last week. Labour losses may top 20 per cent in the worst affected countries. By 2015 the losses could reach up to 12 per cent overall, reducing the labour supply by as much 30-40 per cent in the highest prevalence countries, according to a press release from the Economic Commission for Africa.
Summary executions, torture, rape, disappearances, arbitrary arrests and destruction of property continue to be reported throughout Côte d'Ivoire both in government- and rebel-controlled zones and in the United Nations-patrolled Zone of Confidence (ZOC) separating the combatants, the UN mission said. Despite its drastically reduced staffing, the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) continues to investigate alleged human rights violations, especially since fresh fighting erupted two week ago when Government forces violated a nearly two-year-old ceasefire agreement with an attack on rebels in the north.
The Burundian government and the international community are attentively focused on the mass repatriation of Burundian refugees from Tanzania with perceived improved security scenario within Burundi. But the American based Refugees International, RI, and the Kenya based policy think-tank, ACTS have called on the UN High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, to slow the repatriation process down until the government of Burundi has shown more progress towards addressing key social issues, such as access to land and housing.
At least 10,000 Ivorians have fled their homeland in the last two weeks, fearing a fresh chapter of violence after the government in Abidjan broke an 18-month ceasefire and bombed the rebel-held north. The refugees, most of whom are women, are strung out along remote areas of the border. Most appeared to have come from the area round Guiglo, on the government side of the frontline in western Cote d'Ivoire, and from around Danane, a rebel-held city near the Liberian border.
This December representatives from peasant movements around the world will gather together with each other and with specialists in land reform policies, at the World Forum on Agrarian Reform, to be held in Valencia, Spain. On the top of their agenda will be debunking the hype emanating from the World Bank on the topic of land reform, and organizing a global campaign to fight the pernicious impacts of the Bank's land policies. In fact, recent shifts in World Bank policies toward land might remind one of the title of the old Clint Eastwood movie, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."
A lack of antiretroviral drugs is the "biggest" problem facing HIV/AIDS treatment programs in Africa, according to Robert Colebunders, a Belgian researcher at Uganda's Infectious Disease Institute at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, the Chicago Tribune reports. According to the United Nations, there are about 28 million HIV-positive people in Africa but only 4% of people who need antiretrovirals are receiving them.
“They grew up hearing the sound of weapons, bombs and strong explosions; they took part in some of the cruellest battles ever seen anywhere: for this reason, I wonder if these children will ever manage to overcome the trauma of war,” the President of Sierra Leone, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, said at the opening of the conference dedicated to children in West Africa organised by the Italian department for international development.
International scientists have joined hands with non-governmental organisations such as World Vision to launch a five-million dollar research initiative to improve the lives of millions of poor farmers living in and around the Limpopo river basin. Almost 14 million people live in the Limpopo river basin, which has a catchment area of 413,000 square kilometres – including rivers and tributaries flowing through Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa.
Trraace web site offers a full listing of community and education-based radio stations including: Radio Zibonele (South Africa), Fotouni (Cameroon), Diamono (Sénégal),L’écho des cotonniers (Burkina Faso), La Voix de l’Islam (Bénin), Chemchemi radio (Tanzania)...if you've lost the frequency number of your favourite radio station, this is the place to find it. Unfortunately not all the hundred or so stations listed offer streamed content but there are a good number that do.
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
A four-day workshop has ended in Conakry, Guinea. The meeting brought together around twenty-five participants from countries, including Argentina, the Caribbean, and the Netherlands, and with most of them civil society activists. Other participants included one person from the ACP Secretariat, and a consultant who gave a presentation on the Guinean situation with regard to EPAs. The aim of the meeting was for NGOs to strategise around the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that the EU is negotiating with 77 countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group, and which the EU would like to launch in 2008.
This report, published by UNIFEM, UNAIDS and UNFPA, is a call to action to address the triple threat of gender inequality, poverty and HIV/AIDS. It highlights the work of the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, a UNAIDS initiative that supports programmes which mitigate the impact of HIV/ AIDS on women and girls worldwide. The report focuses on six areas of action: prevention, treatment, caregiving, education, violence and women's rights.
This study explores the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land rights in Kenya, with a particular focus on women as a socially vulnerable group. It examines: the ways that HIV/ AIDS-affected households are coping in terms of land access, use and management; the consequences of these coping strategies on security of access and rights to land; and how changes in land tenure, access and rights to land among different categories of people are affecting agricultural productivity, food security and poverty.
This report from Population Action International examines progress made towards achieving the goal of reproductive health and rights for all by 2015, agreed at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). Key achievements include a significant increase in contraceptive use, and higher secondary school enrolment rates among girls. However, significant challenges remain, notably: high unmet need for effective contraception and protection from HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs); continuing high levels of maternal mortality; high rates of unsafe abortion; and an acute and growing resource shortfall, with many clinics experiencing stockouts (zero supplies) of contraceptives, safe motherhood kits and other reproductive health essentials.
Child Soldiers Newsletter is a free publication bringing you news, information and campaign updates from the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (CSC). It is produced with the financial support of the Human Security Program at Foreign Affairs Canada. CSC works to prevent the use of children as soldiers and to promote their demobilisation, rehabilitation and social reintegration. The CSC is comprised of national, regional and international organisations and coalitions in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
The Media Monitory Project Zimbabwe has pointed to the biased coverage of the state-owned The Herald newspaper, using as an example a distorted report about a recent meeting between President Robert Mugabe and Moroccan Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Benaissa. “This week The Herald provided more evidence of the government media's compulsive disinformation campaign aimed at sprucing up President Mugabe's international stature when it misrepresented details of the meeting between the Zimbabwean leader and Moroccan Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Benaissa. The paper's report claimed that Morocco had, via Benaissa, 'extended an invitation to President Mugabe to help mediate in the conflict over the Saharawi'. No hard evidence was provided to substantiate this claim. Only the Zimbabwe Independent three days later reported that The Herald story was false." Read the full newsletter by clicking on the link below.
Reporters Without Borders has said it was "scandalous" that Charles Kabonero, the editor of Rwanda's main independent weekly Umuseso, could be sentenced to a long term in prison and a heavy fine as a result of a libel suit brought by parliamentary deputy speaker Denis Polisi over one of Kabonero's articles. The article was about the Polisi's influential network of friends in the political area and his possible political ambitions. The Kigali prosecutor's office has requested a four-year prison term and a fine of 50 millions Rwandan francs (about 70,000 euros) for Kabonero.
On 13 November 2004, Mohamed Amara Josiah, a correspondent for "Standard Times" newspaper in Kenema, eastern Sierra Leone, was assaulted by a group of men until he fell into a coma. Amara is currently responding to treatment at a local hospital in the region. According to MFWA sources in Sierra Leone, the attack on Amara followed an article published in the paper, entitled, "Tribalism and Nepotism Rocks Kenema Government Hospital". The article was said to have contained disparaging statements about Samuel Stevens, who heads the government hospital.
Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has condemned the closure of "Le Quotidien", Guinea's only privately-owned daily, on 13 November 2004. The National Communication Council (Conseil national de la communication, CNC) announced the paper's "indefinite suspension" following the publication of an article entitled, "The country is in bad shape...when will the uprising take place?" RSF also deplored the threatening phone calls that the newspaper's editor, Siaka Kouyaté, has been receiving for the past week.
Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has condemned the closure of "Le Quotidien", Guinea's only privately-owned daily, on 13 November 2004. The National Communication Council (Conseil national de la communication, CNC) announced the paper's "indefinite suspension" following the publication of an article entitled, "The country is in bad shape...when will the uprising take place?" RSF also deplored the threatening phone calls that the newspaper's editor, Siaka Kouyaté, has been receiving for the past week.
Applications are invited from persons living and working in Rwanda to participate in a distance learning course on ‘The role of the media in the genocide in Rwanda’.
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda provides a telling case study of two quite separate roles for media in a conflict situation. The genocide was among the most appalling catastrophes of the 20th century, and media played a significant part both internally and internationally. Prior to the genocide, radio stations and newspapers were carefully used by the conspirators to dehumanise the potential victims, Rwanda's Tutsi minority. During the genocide, radio was used by the Hutu extremist conspirators to mobilise the Hutu majority, to coordinate the killings and to ensure that the plans for extermination were faithfully executed.
While a series of terrible massacres of Tutsi were carried out and as the signs of ever-increasing violence grew, Rwanda was totally ignored by the international media. When the genocide came, the erratic media coverage largely conveyed the false notion of two ‘tribes’ of African ‘savages’ mindlessly slaughtering each other as they had done from time immemorial. As a result, there was little public pressure in the West for governments to intervene.
In this distance learning course you will study these two facets of the media role in the genocide in detail. You will see how easily the concept of free speech and free press in a local situation can be perverted for foul ends. We will ask how this dilemma could be resolved. We will explore the problem of inadequate or even distorted international coverage of crises and conflicts in areas poorly understood by Western journalists. We will consider whether this unfortunate situation can be improved in the future.
The course, developed by Fahamu for UPEACE, will be taught by Gerald Caplan, a Canadian-based public policy analyst and international coordinator of the "Remembering Rwanda" Project. He is also a public affairs commentator and author of "Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide," the report of the International Panel of Eminent Personalities To Investigate the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, appointed by the Organization of African Unity (OAU). He is presently co-editing a book on the Rwandan genocide ten years later.
The course has been developed for journalists and other professionals in the field of media, students of journalism, NGO staff and policy makers, and will lead to a certificate from the University for Peace.
This course is designed to take 10 weeks using an interactive CDROM containing all materials required for the course. You will be guided in your work by a course tutor via email. You will also have an opportunity to discuss your work with fellow students via email.
The course will include a workshop in which all students, as well as the tutor come together for several days of intensive work. There will be a final short period in which students will work independently and submit a final assignment. The topic for this assignment will be determined at the workshop.
Applications are invited from suitable candidates in Rwanda to attend the first course. The distance learning course will begin on 10 January, with a workshop to be held in Butare, Rwanda, on 15-17 March.
Please note that this is a pilot run of the course and that is why it is limited to Rwandan participants. Following the first pilot, the course will be fine-tuned and will be made available at a later date for broader participation from elsewhere in Africa.
Eligibility
Applicants must:
- Have good command of written and spoken English
- Have access to a computer with a CDROM drive (PC or Mac) for at least seven hours a week
- Have an email address (access to the WWW would be an advantage)
- Be living and working in Rwanda
Application process
Applicants should submit a letter, in English, of at least 500 words explaining why this course is important in their work, and motivating why they should be selected. They should submit a summary CV of no more than one page, and provide evidence from their employer/institution that they have access to a suitable computer. Applications should be sent by email only to Fahamu to: [email protected]. Applications should be received by 22 November 2004.
Fees
There are 15 places available. Since it is a pilot course, fees, and costs of attending the workshop in Butare will exceptionally be met by the University for Peace.
The Ege University International Cultural Studies Symposium seeks paper proposals for its 10th annual conference to be held at Ege University , Faculty of Letters, Izmir , Turkey . This year's topic aims to explore a wide range of experiences associated with migration, immigration, movement, and mixing of cultures/peoples.
Courses include Leading Developmental Practice, Foundations in Developmental Practice, Developmental Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation course and Developmental Supervision. Visit their web page for more details.
The August-October 2004 World Movement for Democracy theme is Using Advocacy to Achieve Democratic Reform. This instalment highlights projects and organizations around the world whose work demonstrates how groups can advocate and interact with government to achieve institutional reform.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), in collaboration with the 3rd World Water Forum Secretariat and the World Water Council, has created a peer-to-peer announcement list called WATER-L. This list will be used, in the short-term, for the distribution by WATER-L list members to other WATER-L list members of announcements during the 3rd World Water Forum. Please send an email to [email protected] for more information.
INSTRAW is holding an e-discussion on gender and conflict prevention/resolution. The central question of this e-discussion is: "How do we ensure the integration of gender and the inclusion of women and girls in conflict prevention/resolution?" Specifically, "What research and capacity-building needs to be developed?" Contact [email protected] for more information.
The Swiss Foundation Population, Migration and Environment (PME) and the International Metropolis Project are pleased to announce a Call for Proposals to conduct developmental studies of 'The Governance of International Migratory Flows and International Migration'. The developmental studies should contribute to the preparation of more elaborate research proposals that seek the support of national and international research funding bodies, including foundations. Successful applicants may receive up to 100,000 euros to conduct the developmental studies that have been accepted. Research outlines pertaining to these studies should be submitted no later than January 1st, 2005. Visit the website for more information.
Hundreds of students from Kampala institutions recently participated in a demonstration against corruption in Uganda. Luzira Secondary School, Good Shepherd Primary School in Ndeeba and Kampala Study Centre were among the institutions. The demonstration was organised by the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Uganda (ACCU).
The long-running inquiry into Kenya's biggest financial scandal has ended after some 300 days. The so-called Goldenberg Affair is thought to have cost Kenya as much as $600m between 1990 and 1993. During the hearings, former President Daniel arap Moi was accused of being part of a scam that involved re-exporting gold and diamonds. Neither Mr Moi nor his close aides appeared in person but their lawyer denied the allegations on their behalf.
Because of a sharp rise in violent crime, including rape, armed robbery and murder, Burundi is poised to pass a law to greatly speed up the judicial process. But critics, including Amnesty International, say the draft law “makes a mockery of justice.” This week, Burundi’s National Assembly may consider draft legislation that would truncate the judicial process - from arrest to possible execution - to less than 40 days.
A visiting UN Security Council delegation, which is touring Africa's Great Lakes region, has asked the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to speed up its electoral timetable so that elections would be held on time in June 2005. The preliminary reforms meant to pave the way for elections have not been approved. One of these is the reunification of the armed forces, from previously belligerent groups. So far, only the army chief of staff and other senior army command positions have been integrated. Rank-and-file soldiers still give their loyalty to the their former militia commanders.
The victory of 69-year-old President-elect Hifikepunye Pohamba in the Namibian presidential elections last week heralds a new political era. He succeeds founding president Sam Nujoma, 75, who will step down in March next year after three terms in office. Pohamba, standing against six other candidates, secured 76.4 percent of the vote. The ruling party, SWAPO, scooped a 76 percent share in a nine-party parliamentary contest - the same percentage it won in 1999.
An underground journal named after the Zimbabwean war of independence, Chimurenga, provides a platform for wordy renegades from Africa and the diaspora. In print since March 2002, the journal is published by Ntone Edjabe, a Cameroonian journalist based in Cape Town. It started as a quarterly publication, but now the magazine rather eccentrically only hits the streets when there is something worth talking about in the arena of arts, culture and politics.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, 75, died of unknown causes in Paris early on the morning of November 11. Akbar Muhammad, international representative for Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, says that Blacks should not let Arafat's critics cloud their opinions of him. "We [Nation of Islam] have had many meetings with him. I feel that the Africans in the Diaspora, especially those in North America, need to make an assessment of Arafat not based on what we're hearing in the media of the West, but his relationship with Africa and his continuous reach for those who are struggling on the African continent as well as those who are off the African continent," he said.
A new report by World Vision about the conflict in northern Uganda illustrates the impact that a crisis can have on the spread of HIV/AIDS. The report states that while the spread of HIV/AIDS is down nationally, "prevalence rates are actually on the rise in conflict-affected areas, most notably in Gulu, the largest and most populated of the war-affected northern districts. Rates in this area were almost double the national average."
How many children will be eligible for primary school in the next 10 years? How will HIV/AIDS affect these numbers and the ability of children to attend school? Researchers from the UK University of Liverpool investigate the potential impact of the epidemic on the demand for primary education in Uganda and Tanzania. The impact of HIV/AIDS on enrolment demand in these countries is overshadowed by the effects of increasing poverty, inequality and social disruption. These results do not seem to justify a specific policy focus on children, especially orphans, from HIV/AIDS-affected households. General poverty-alleviating measures in education – like fee reduction or elimination, or a drive to achieve universal primary education – will have a positive effect on all vulnerable groups, including those affected by HIV/AIDS.
'Seek ye the political Kingdom first and all else shall follow...' so runs the quotation attributed to the father of Pan Africanism, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. I whole heartedly agree with Dr. Tajudeen's analysis of the Foreign Aid Saga in Africa. I will not dwell on the past but on the future.
Where to Africa? So cried Aime Caesaire...You who neither invented the gun powder nor the steam engine!
That poetic rendition of the African psycho-cultural disposition at the dawn of independence, unfortunately applies even today on the eve of social political and economic 'Armaggeddon'.
In making my contribution to the total liberation of the Africans, I have a few ideas to share with my Ugandan brother and scion of the new Pan African renaissance. I will speak figuratively because as the Kikuyu say 'Nyumba nyinyi iciraga utuku', a small house makes its deliberations at night.
I WILL SING A NEW SONG
Have you asked dear Pan Africanist
Why Nkrumah and Nyerere failed?
Have you forgotten why Lumumba died?
Have you forgotten Okot P’Bitek’s song of Lawino?
Do you know why the father of Blacks’ liberation W. E. B Du Bois
Lie buried in Accra…unsung and unmourned!
Tell me my brother if you know why the former ‘African socialist
intellectual’, is dead?
Tell me why Ngugi wa Thiong’o who refused to be James anymore
Now enjoys the fruits of his nemesis capitalist bourgeosie in America?
Tell me why Soyinka and Achebe are sharpening the minds of the
rich as their fellow Africans wallow in intellectual poverty?
Tell me who is left to champion the African course
Tell me why I cannot be bought by the rich if my elder brother and
mentor has been bought?
Tell me now…tell me today…because I have no time to waste
Tell me before I die of AIDS or poverty
Tell me now my brother I can’t wait…my brother cannot wait
I have my degrees but I cannot work
Yes I cannot work because my president has been told to retrench
Me
Told by a World bank/IMF that I did not elect
Tell me who stole my vote
Tell me whether I should succumb to God’s fate as my father did
Or I should rise up like my father’s brother who died during Mau
Mau
Tell me whether I should follow that example of a man who is never remembered
A man who never got what he fought for…a man whose children
never went to school
Tell me…you the new Christ or is it Shaka
Tell me which message you bear…which strategy boils in your
blessed mind?
Tell me this strategy that your brother could not master
Tell me this strategy that your enemies cannot fathom
Tell me today or I call you a dreamer
A big dreamer just like Dedan Kimathi, Kinjeketile, Frantz Fanon
Cheikh Anta Diop, George Padmore…Malcolm X
I know my sister only believes she is beautiful when she looks like
the girl across the wall
But I cannot blame her
It is foolhardy to enslave men on chains…it is in vogue
Men chained in the mind do the master’s bidding
They diligently work for the master’s interest even when he is asleep
I refused to stay in America and my relatives called me mad
‘What have you come back to do here…in poverty…why don’t you
be like the rest?
‘Oh God of heaven, my mother cried…how can my son be bewitched now when I need him most’?
Is this the club of mad men that you invite me to belong to Tajudeen?
A club of men who cannot put food on the table for their families
Because those who control jobs…put them on the black list
A club of men who cannot be quoted in any media at home because they sing a dead song!
A song that the World Bank has banned in an ‘independent’ African nation!
Come closer my brother…look at the young prince of the North
He talks war when African warriors carry the spear no more
When the spear can neither kill a rat nor the python!
He says no more money for AIDS…for condoms…for the cure!
Let those African brothers behave…let them abstain and reduce their numbers
Let them be few even when young women roam without husbands…called by proxy wars and AIDS
I want to sing a new song
I want to sing my song
In my own way
But they want me to sing their song
In their own way
The Clays of Kenya and the Thatchers of Equitorial Guinea
Wants Churchill back in the pearl of Africa
Churchill is back in Sierra Leone
As De Gaulle man’s the gates of Abidjan
Yes…because the African brothers chopped each others’ hands
Yes…because Governor Baring knew ‘the Africans could not rule
themselves’
Tell me Tajudeen why I should join you in the Pan African dream!
An official report presented to the French government paints a damning picture of racial discrimination in the workplace and recommends a series of measures including the mandatory introduction of anonymous CVs. According to the report, young people of Arab and African origin are up to five times more likely to be unemployed than the rest of the French population, while their chances of even achieving an interview are severely reduced as a result of their name and skin color.
The Zimbabwean government’s draft bill to establish an electoral commission is a step forward, but lacks key provisions that would ensure this body’s independence and impartiality during general elections in March, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper. The bill is currently being debated in parliament. The briefing paper details how the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Bill contains provisions that fall short of the benchmarks for democratic elections recently agreed by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), of which Zimbabwe is a member state. “Zimbabwe’s move to establish an electoral commission is a step in the right direction,” said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division. “But this bill fails to provide the protections needed to ensure a level playing field for next year’s general elections.”
Tanzania is highly dependent on donor aid. It has one of the highest proportions of donor aid to gross national product (GNP) of any developing country. In recent decades a number of new strategies - from structural adjustment to sector-wide approaches and poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) - have been field-tested in Tanzania. Yet despite all these efforts at poverty alleviation and a huge donor presence, Tanzania has steadily slipped down the Human Development Index. Should donors pause to consider whether they need to stop trying new approaches and instead focus on long-term activities?
At independence, copper-rich Zambia seemed set to become one of sub-Saharan Africa's richest countries. Today, after almost three decades of continuous intervention by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it is one of the poorest. Externally-imposed policies have included trade liberalisation, removal of legal restrictions on prices and amount of competition between businesses (deregulation), privatisation, subsidy cuts, reducing public-sector job opportunities and cuts in salaries. The consequence of this - a spiralling debt, very slow economic growth, destruction of key industries and social crisis - needs urgent attention to stop the situation from further deterioration.
As part of the pilot stage of the UNDP-UNESCO Joint Project for Leadership Development, it has been determined that 4 Africans from the Diaspora should be identified and offered the opportunity to undertake 2-month internships within Ghana, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Senegal. These internships are intended to offer opportunities to young Africans in the Diaspora to enable them to build their confidence and give them practical experience of working within development organizations in Africa.
The Open Society Justice Initiative has published a handbook to aid civil society groups in tracking election campaign finances and exposing corruption. Monitoring Election Campaign Finance: A Handbook for NGOs is the most systematic effort to date to bring together and digest the range of campaign finance monitoring experience gained in recent years. Corrupt electoral campaign financing - whether by private donors or government incumbents commandeering state resources - is damaging not only to the electoral process, but to democracy itself. Political finance regulations, intended to create a level playing field for electoral competition, are often inadequate.
The Public Health in Complex Emergencies training program (PHCE) is a two-week residential course that focuses on critical public health issues faced by NGO/PVO personnel working in complex emergencies. The goal of the course is to enhance the capacity of humanitarian assistance workers and their organizations to respond to the health needs of refugees and internally displaced persons affected by these emergencies. The 2005 course dates are now available.
The New York Times on Tuesday examined how health care paraprofessionals, or individuals trained to assist physicians, are performing medical duties - such as emergency obstetrical and HIV/AIDS care - in some African countries to help alleviate the "brain drain" resulting from doctors moving to "rich Western nations and more prosperous African countries." Ethiopia, Mozambique and Malawi, all of which have "extreme doctor shortages," are "virtually doubling" the number of paraprofessionals who are going through training, according to the Times.
Still catching their breath after the introduction of tough dispensing rules, community pharmacies in small towns have been dealt a further blow as the health department issues thousands of dispensing licences to health practitioners. Taki Kyriacos is packing it in. After 26 years as the only pharmacist in the small Eastern Cape farming community of Stutterheim, Kyriacos says he can no longer make a living. He primarily blames Government moves to hand out dispensing licences to any doctor or health practitioner who applies for one for the situation that now challenges his very existence.
Thousands of children’s lives could be saved each year simply by washing their hands, the government, the UN and other aid organisations said on Saturday. The organisations are aiming to bring about a massive behavioural change to cut sickness and death in the country by raising awareness about hygiene and water sanitation.
Displaced residents of the troubled Pool region in the Republic of Congo are gradually returning home under a government-facilitated programme that saw 150 people make it back to their village of Fiya last week. They had fled the Pool in 2002 when the civil war erupted in the area between government troops and the so-called Ninja rebel forces loyal to the Rev Frederic Bitsangou, alias Pasteur Ntoumi.
To examine how the UN has been providing protection to internally displaced persons and how to make that response more effective, the Brookings Institution-Johns Hopkins Project on Internal Displacement and the Internal Displacement Unit of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs dispatched a team into the field. The study finds that the UN's approach to protecting vulnerable populations "is still largely ad hoc and driven more by the personalities and convictions of individuals on the ground than by an institutional, system-wide agenda."
The latest Justice Africa briefing on Sudan says that after ambiguity during most of 2004, international policy towards peace in Sudan has stabilized on a strategy that prioritises the Naivasha peace talks, while seeking a decisive end to the violence in Darfur. But, says Justice Africa, there are clear efforts to undermine the prospects for peace, especially from some elements within the Government of Sudan. "There are three overlapping explanations from this, including lack of capacity to control the armed militias and security forces in Darfur, a GoS policy of testing the limits of international concern, and a concerted attempt by those still loyal to Hassan al Turabi, some still within government and others in the opposition, to destablise the situation and bring down Ali Osman, so that they can take power."
Partnerships between governments, the international system, civil society, the media and private sector offer real solutions to ending gender-based violence, according to speakers at a United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) event to observe International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women. Despite substantial progress in the last two decades to raise awareness of gender- based violence as a serious human rights violation, today's world is no safer for women and girls. The scale of the problem has reached epidemic proportions - globally, one in three women will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime.
The Coalition on Violence against Women- COVAW (K) is a women's human rights organization that is committed to the eradication of all forms of violence against women and the promotion of women's human rights. She is a registered non-governmental organization that does not make profit and is non-partisan. The coalition works in close collaboration with other like-minded Non-Governmental Organization, Community Based Organizations, Government and Donors.
COVAW (K) has locally spearheaded the Annual Sixteen Days of Activism Against Violence against women Global Campaign, which has been instrumental in placing violence against women in the public and political domain.
For the full calendar of activities taking place in Kenya over the 16 days, please contact [email protected]
Significantly more young women than men are now being infected by HIV/Aids as violence against women and girls fuels the spread of the virus. HIV/Aids is a human rights catastrophe which increasingly affects women, said Amnesty International in the report 'Women, HIV/Aids and human rights' published ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. "The increasing spread of HIV/Aids among women and sexual violence are interlinked. If governments are serious in their fight against the disease they also have to deal with another worldwide "pandemic": violence against women," said Amnesty International.
This report covers the key protection and obligations for women and girls in armed opposition groups under international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHR). In seeking to learn more about the experiences of women and girls within armed opposition groups and to answer questions about their potential roles in promoting IHL and IHR, a unique workshop was held in August 2004, in Geneva, Switzerland. During the four day workshop, 32 women from 18 armed opposition groups met with a small group of peace and human rights activists, humanitarian actors, and scholars. Drawing on the voices of the 32 women present from 18 armed opposition groups as well as previous relevant studies, the report investigates the ways in which women and girls enter into armed opposition groups and their active participation within the groups.
This article from Women's Human Rights Net addresses the root of violence through an analysis of masculinity as it relates to public and private conflicts, the creation of a culture of peace and sustainable human development as central tenets of a new society, the violation of women's right to participate in peace processes, the struggle against globalized impunity and its consequences in relation to the right to justice, truth and accountability.
In March 2002, Equality Now launched its campaign against abduction and rape in Ethiopia, highlighting 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. Both abduction and rape are criminal offences under Ethiopian law, but until recently, Articles 558 and 599 of the 1957 Ethiopian Penal Code provided that in the event of subsequent marriage to his victim, the perpetrator is exempt from criminal responsibility for these crimes. Read more from the November update of the campaign by clicking on the link provided.
Higher and Tertiary Education Minister Herbert Murerwa announced recently that the government had embarked on an Ethno-based Writers’ Scheme that would, ideally, facilitate the development of education curricula in the country. Under the scheme, both lecturers and students at tertiary level would contribute in the writing of literature relevant to Zimbabwe’s political, economic and cultural realities. Murerwa said that the project was ostensibly aimed at promoting the production of learning materials.
In recent years as globalization and market liberalization have marched forward unabated and the global commons continue to be commodified and privatized at a rapid pace. In this global process, the ownership, sale and supply of water is increasingly the flashpoint for debates and conflict over privatization and nowhere is the debate more advanced or acute than southern Africa. "The Age of Commodity" provides an overview on the debates over water privatization including a conceptual overview of water ‘privatization,’ how it relates to human rights, macro-economic policy and GATS and how the debates are shaped by research methodologies.
Mikela is a young and vivacious beauty with a unique artistic talent. Her nightmare starts in the open plains of the Tanzanian Maasailand where she experiences female circumcision. The saga of tradition and ensuing events force Mikela to embark on a blinded journey, one that would eventually take her across two continents.
A recently published play from the prolific Nigerian poet, dramatist and literary critic, which testifies to the author's commitment to socially relevant art and artistic activism for which he is justifiably renowned. The play tells the story of Yankeland, an imaginary African country, where the country's natural and donated wealth is in the hands of a few corrupt rulers in cahoots with the American military. The powerful prey on the exploited masses, whilst upholding a facade of god-fearing morality.
DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda...This comprehensive calendar will tell you exactly what’s going on in your country during the 16 days of activism. There's no excuse not to join in!
Hope for the survival of many of Africa's unique animals lies in multinational cooperation initiatives like the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, although the challenges remain enormous, say conservationists. The park, situated on the South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe borders, is one of the world's largest. The treaty to create the parks was signed in Xai-Xai, Mozambique, in December 2002, bringing together some of the region's best and most acclaimed national wild game parks: South Africa's Kruger, Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou, and Mozambique's newly developed Limpopo.
Former Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu was a thorn in the flesh of successive apartheid regimes in South Africa until the demise of white rule in 1994. Now, with apartheid gone, Tutu is directing his desire for social justice elsewhere. "We were involved in the struggle (against apartheid) because we believed we would evolve a new kind of society: a caring, a compassionate society. At the moment many, too many, of our people live in gruelling, demeaning and dehumanising poverty. We are sitting on a powder keg," Tutu said this week. More than 40 percent of South Africans, most of them black, live below the poverty line of a dollar a day according to Statistics South Africa, a government agency.
Cultural norms dictate that girls should get married early in Niger: according to various surveys, the average age for marriage amongst females in Niger is 13. As a result, many find themselves giving birth before they have properly left childhood behind themselves. But when children give birth to children, complications ensue - not least those created by obstetric fistulas. But, what of the men who allow this condition to persist by marrying girls who are too young? If prevention is better than cure, are efforts underway to alter their perceptions about the age at which is it acceptable for girls to be married?
Heinrich Bomhke’s debut 12 minute film, Marcel King is Dead, captures the events which led to and followed the brutal murder of nineteen-year-old Marcel King by ANC-led Durban metro security guards on June 24, 2004 in Phoenix, Durban. Marcel’s mother was part of a community resistance against the electricity disconnections faced by the poors of the democratic South Africa. In the ensuing struggle, one security employee cocked his gun. Aimed. Marcel King used his body to shield his mother from the eminent gun fire… He was shot in the head at short range. The film tells the story which unfolded from death to burial.
Four Ugandan MPs say they were whipped with bamboo sticks by soldiers as they travelled to meet their constituents to discuss the constitution. The opposition politicians say they intended to discuss contents of a white paper, which proposes to lift the two-term limit on the presidency. Such a move would allow President Yoweri Museveni to run again in 2006.
At least 20 people have been killed in a raid on the remote town of Birao in the north-east of the Central African Republic, according to reports. The attack comes ahead of a referendum on the constitution and as fears mount that the CAR could soon see an influx of refugees from Sudan's Darfur region.
They threaten the peace, stability and development of the world's poorest continent and kill or mutilate 12,000 people each year. This was the reason that African governments agreed recently to a landmark initiative aimed at eliminating an estimated 40 million landmines from the continent. At the African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, a new "common African position" was unveiled on 17 September 2004. It aims to ensure that the continent becomes an anti-personnel mine (APM) free zone, with a framework largely centred on the 1997 Ottawa Convention. The initiative also stresses inter-African cooperation as a vital issue in successful mine clearance and calls for more support for victims and greater transparency by governments.
In what has been described as an important step to cementing territorial rights, and thereby the country's agricultural and economic recovery, three rural communities in Angola's southern province of Huila will receive title to their land on Friday. Paolo Groppo, a Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) official in the capital, Luanda, told IRIN that "we are concerned that community rights have not been protected so far" and that "it is clearly important for local communities to have their territorial rights recognised by the authorities".
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has embarked on a three-year project to fight child abuse in Malawi. The US $3.5 million project, funded by the Norwegian government, will tackle issues such child labour, juvenile justice and violence against children, UNICEF representative Aida Girma told IRIN on Wednesday.
Members of the UN Security Council visiting Africa's Great Lakes region asked the government of Burundi on Tuesday to speed up the country's peace process and complete the political transitional period by 2005. "It is imperative to conclude the process as there is no alternative to the 2005 elections," Jean Marc de la Sablière, the French ambassador to the UN and head of the 15-member delegation, told reporters on arrival at Bujumbura airport.
Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Zanu PF secretary for administration who only last week expressed his interest to become vice President at the party’s forthcoming Congress, is now out of the race after he lost the nomination to Water Resources Minister, Joyce Mujuru. Analysts said Mnangagwa, the Speaker of Parliament and pre-Congress favourite for the post, will have to go back to the drawing back after only four provinces nominated him, with the rest opting for Mujuru.
While accepted rhetoric says that donors respond to nationally-owned development plans, the reality is that these plans have little impact on either policy outcomes or the volume of loans a country receives. Opaque assessments conducted by the World Bank - known as Country Policy and Institutional Assessments - do. Critics argue that the scorecard is a way to coerce borrowers into adopting the Bank's preferred model of economic development, argues this article from The Bretton Woods Project.
"There are no legal restrictions or principles which justify impeding the access of national and foreign observers to the locations of vote counting at all levels," declared an independent legal opinion submitted to the National Election Commission (CNE) earlier this week. The CNE has repeatedly said that the law does not allow more openness, but this has been contested by observers and media. The Electoral Observatory, a coalition of the seven prominent national groups which are observing this election, commissioned the independent legal opinion. In a covering letter, it demanded that the CNE respond publicly to the alternative legal view. The Electoral Observatory said civil society must take action to promote more observer access to the final count to ensure a "clean" election. This is according to the most recent edition of the Mozambique Election Bulletin.
Thanks for your article. It states what I have been thinking for the past thirty years. I was in Nairobi in 1969. I saw no aid vehicles. It was a pleasant city and country.
I returned in the 1980s and there was a strong possibility that I could have been run over by an aid vehicle of one kind or another.
How can Africa prosper with unfair trade like the subsidisation of farming in the US and EU to the tune of $350 billion per year? Take debt - modern colonisation.
I think the penny is beginning to drop that the structures in place now are comparable with the European structural policy that kept slavery in place for centuries. Only global structural change will bring about lasting change which will transfer power to people to chart heir own destiny. Right now Africa is being made the object of other people's need.
Also, structural charity cannot be a solution for structural injustice maintained by an international elite that prolongs the construct of colonialism. It is an insult to "Thank God tonight its them instead of you". Whose God are they thanking? It cannot be the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is that of the excluded.
Angry.
Christian Aid seeks an exceptional and experienced Africanist policy researcher who will continue and develop its strong reputation for effective policy and advocacy strategies on corporate and Africa programme priorities (currently livelihoods, accountable governance, economic justice and HIV/AIDS. This is a key senior post in the Africa Division.
Visit the Women's Net website for a listing of events taking place around the country over the period of the 16 days. The contact details of the institutions hosting the events are included and there are also contact details for you to have your event listed.
The cyber dialogues are one of several initiatives to raise awareness and change behaviour as part of the Sixteen Days of Activism on Gender Violence using new information and communication technologies. Visit the website and have your say.
Visit this Amnesty International web page and get some ideas for what you can do to end gender violence, from contacting government officials to coordinating a "light a candle event".
These are extracts from the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, available at http://www.pambazuka.org/petition/1/protocol.pdf
- "Violence against women" means all acts perpetrated against women which cause or could cause them physical, sexual, psychological, and economic harm, including the threat to take such acts; or to undertake the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on or deprivation of fundamental freedoms in private or public life in peace time and during situations of armed conflicts or of war...
- States Parties shall take appropriate and effective measures to:
a) enact and enforce laws to prohibit all forms of violence against women including unwanted or forced sex whether the violence takes place in private or public;
b) adopt such other legislative, administrative, social and economic measures as may be necessary to ensure the prevention, punishment and eradication of all forms of violence against women;
c) identify the causes and consequences of violence against women and take appropriate measures to prevent and eliminate such violence;
d) actively promote peace education through curricula and social communication in order to eradicate elements in traditional and cultural beliefs, practices and stereotypes which legitimise and exacerbate the persistence and tolerance of violence against women;
e) punish the perpetrators of violence against women and implement programmes for the rehabilitation of women victims;
f) establish mechanisms and accessible services for effective information, rehabilitation and reparation for victims of violence against women;
g) prevent and condemn trafficking in women, prosecute the perpetrators of such trafficking and protect those women most at risk;
h) prohibit all medical or scientific experiments on women without their informed consent; i) provide adequate budgetary and other resources for the implementation and monitoring of actions aimed at preventing and eradicating violence against women;
j) ensure that, in those countries where the death penalty still exists, not to carry out death sentences on pregnant or nursing women;
k) ensure that women and men enjoy equal rights in terms of access to refugee status determination procedures and that women refugees are accorded the full protection and benefits guaranteed under international refugee law, including their own identity and other documents.
AIDS. It killed roughly 3 million people last year, most of them poor, and most of them in Africa. Between 34 and 42 million people are living with HIV. Absent antiretroviral therapies, AIDS will have killed the vast majority of them by 2015.
In such a world, time can seem a luxury, and the rigours of critical enquiry an indulgence. We need things done now, yesterday, last year. Indeed, an overdue sense of urgency has taken hold in the past five years - much of it thanks to relentless AIDS advocacy efforts. Along with sets of received wisdoms, a more or less standardized framework for understanding the epidemic and its effects has evolved, and a lexicon for expressing this knowledge has been established. All this has helped put and keep AIDS in the spotlight. It has popularized knowledge of the epidemic, countered the earlier sense of paralysis or denial, helped marshal billions of dollars in funding and goad dozens of foot-dragging countries into action. It has worked wonders.
But alongside these achievements are some troubling trends. There has emerged a roster of truisms that, in some respects, convey a misleading sense of certitude, and that might even be steering institutional responses in ineffectual directions. As well, awkward gaps are cleaving the AIDS world - gaps that threaten to detach the staples of advocacy from the riches of epidemiological and social research, and spoil the kind of multidisciplinary ferment that the struggle against AIDS dearly needs.
Strong advocacy tends to convey trim, crisp, unequivocal information. But in achieving this, vital complexity and ambivalence is often snipped and siphoned out. At times, research findings are casually interpreted or contradictory evidence is ignored. Sometimes intuitive reasoning is made to stand-in for absent empirical evidence. Much of the time, eclectic dynamics are jammed into simplistic, AIDS-centric frameworks.
All this occurs in good faith - and with the pressures of time and the palpable need to spur countries into action snapping at advocates’ heels. But it shouldn’t stand in the way of doing the right things and doing them properly. And that’s the danger we’re flirting with at the moment.
Effective advocacy is not simply a neutral catalyst. It also invests activities with a specific content and character - all the more so when the advocacy carries the imprint and financial heft of key donors and multilateral agencies. This isn’t just a matter of how knowledge is being constructed and assimilated; it has very practical consequences. Big-gun advocacy often prefigures key elements and features of AIDS programming around the world. But we’re seeing an unhappy antinomy develop between the streamlined demands of AIDS advocacy (and their translation into policy), and the generation and interpretation of reliable AIDS research and analysis.
Some examples. By the late 1990s it was widely assumed that conflict heightened the likelihood of HIV spread. Why? Because people are dislodged from their homes, their “normal” rhythms of social organization are disrupted, they lack access to many essential services, and women especially are vulnerable to sexual violence and might be forced to adopt, in the preferred euphemism, risky survival strategies (i.e. trade sex for favours, goods and services). It made good, intuitive sense. And by the early 2000s the view that conflict led to rising HIV rates was in wide circulation.
Evidence for these assertions was scant, though. Data from the Balkans showed no sign of significantly expanding epidemics there, for instance. In Africa, neither Angola, Sierra Leone, Sudan nor the Great Lakes region offered evidence that conflicts there were triggering rising HIV rates. (Instead, in northwestern Kenya, for example, the HIV infection rates in some refugee camps in 2002 were found to be much lower than they were in surrounding areas.) It now appears that chronic conflicts like that in Angola might actually have curbed the spread of HIV by limiting mobility (transport infrastructure was badly damaged, trading networks were truncated etc.). It might be that the threat of a surging epidemic is greater as peace is recuperated and as normality returns in post-conflict settings. The lesson? Assumptions, no matter how logical they seem, should be tested before they’re paraded as facts.
Eclectic realities
Indeed, thanks to the massive output of AIDS impact literature in the past 5 years it’s becoming increasingly evident how multifaceted and complex the responses of people and systems are to the epidemic - and not least in southern Africa, where AIDS is hitting hardest. Yet, the popularized knowledge of AIDS impact is, in some cases, as roughly-hewn as it is loud.
One example is the understandable temptation to distil generalized and ubiquitous “truths” from very specific, usually highly localized research findings. Thus, labour losses attributed to AIDS on a single farming estate in Zimbabwe, for example, can end up being extrapolated to all of Zimbabwe (or even to “Africa” as a whole). From this there might emerge a claim that, say, “AIDS is cutting agricultural productivity by one-third in Africa”. In advocacy terms, of course, this has great currency - it is the stuff of headlines and sound bytes that jolt. But it matters that the statement is inaccurate - and not just for didactic reasons.
The epidemic’s socioeconomic impact is varied and complex, and operates as part of a web of other, richly varied factors. Neither the epidemic’s effects nor the responses they elicit necessarily adhere to a predictable, homogenous, linear paths. This has important bearing on the kinds of policies and interventions that are most likely to trump or at least cushion the epidemic’s impact. Once such variety and contingency is scrubbed out - and reality is rendered as a mechanistic and predictable sequence of events - the effects can be both unhappy and wasteful.
Another example. There has emerged a palpable tendency to single out and over-privilege AIDS as a debilitating factor, as illustrated during the 2002-2003 food crisis in southern Africa. There is ample evidence showing that the effects of AIDS in rural households, particularly those engaged in agricultural production, are pernicious. Where one or two key crops must be planted and harvested at specific times of the year, for example, losing even a few workers at the crucial planting and harvesting periods could scuttle production. But then came a grand leap of logic. With little but anecdotal evidence, a causal and definitive link was asserted between the AIDS epidemic and the food shortages.
The reasoning hinged mainly on reduced labour inputs (due to widespread illness and death of working-age adults). But these inputs figure among a wide range of variables needed to achieve food security - including marketing systems, food reserve stores, rain patterns, soil quality, affordability of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, security of tenure, food prices, income levels, access to and the terms of financing etc. It is difficult, perhaps even impossible to unscramble the effects of AIDS on rural communities and food security from economic, climatic, environmental and governance developments. The epidemic’s apparent effect on food production occurred in concert with a series of other factors, including aberrant weather patterns and an ongoing narrative of unbridled market liberalization, hobbled governance and wretched policy decisions.
Singling AIDS out as a primary, salient factor is a lot easier than fingering and tackling the other, more prickly factors - many of them tied to formidable interests and forces - that are at play. But it can be misleading and tempt short-sighted and ineffectual policy responses. When it comes to the epidemic’s mangling consequences, policy responses are more likely to make a genuine difference if AIDS is made to take its place in the dock alongside the other culprits, which often include agricultural, trade and macroeconomic policies, land tenure and inheritance systems, and the capacity of the state to provide and maintain vital support services in rural areas. The over-privileging of AIDS lets decision-makers off the hook by endorsing fashionable courses of action that can fail to go to the heart of the matter.
The ground zero of this epidemic is where community and household life is built. And there’s no doubt that, win or lose, the outcome of societies’ encounters with AIDS ultimately depends on how communities and households are able to respond. This is widely recognized, hence the emphasis on so-called community safety nets and household “coping” strategies in AIDS impact writing and policy outlines. There’s the danger, though, that unless these mechanisms are buttressed with other, stout forms of structural support, we may end up fencing off much of the AIDS burden within already-strained households and communities. Yet, such forms of structural support have been systematically dismantled or neglected in many of the hardest-hit countries - typically as part of structural adjustments demanded by international financial institutions. Some of those same institutions are now enthusiastic fans of community resilience. Indeed, after years of scorched-earth social policy directives they are now casting the “community” in an almost redemptive role. And this while much of social life has been subordinated to the reign of the market and the state shorn of its ability to fulfil societal duties.
The safety net and coping pieties sometimes skip around other important facets. Since many informal safety nets tend to centre on reciprocity, they run the risk of reproducing the inequalities that characterize social relations at community level. One study in Kagera, Tanzania, for example, found that the poorest households plunged deeper into debt because they lacked the wherewithal to enter into reciprocal arrangements. Women in particular found themselves sidelined. “Communities” and “the poor” are not homogenous.
Overall, a potentially treacherous distance is opening between the imperatives of advocacy and outlines of big-league programming, on the one hand, and rigorous epidemiological and social research and analysis, on the other. Part of this is a hazard of advocacy, which tends to favour declamation over explanation. Part of it is inflected with institutional “cultures” and ideologies. Part of it is panic-induced; it’s 2004, and we can count the national “success stories” against the epidemic on one hand. Understandably, there’s a rush on.
But part of the problem also lies in a failure to reconcile the schizoid aspects of AIDS - as a short-term emergency and a long-term crisis. It’s become second-nature to hitch the word “AIDS” to “development”. Google that phrase and the search engine will fling 5 million hits back at you. This implies a buzzing cross-pollination of expertise, inquisitiveness and knowledge-building. That’s an illusion, though. AIDS advocacy might have embraced some of the lingo, but it has assimilated very little of the critical knowledge built in development theory and practice over the past quarter century, not to mention other pertinent fields such as sociology, political geography and economics. There is precious little genuine, multidisciplinary rigour evident in AIDS discourse. And the smorgasbord feel of many AIDS programmes reflects this shortcoming. It’s as if, once declarative truisms are achieved, serious reflection becomes a luxury. In a race against the clock, programmes and strategies must now be crafted. New insights or complicating information become a headache. And so the incipient interdisciplinary dialogue splutters into the intellectual equivalent of a one-night-stand. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
All this is unfortunate and, ultimately, counter-productive. Because AIDS advocacy is not just about sharing vital nuggets of knowledge, it is aimed also at promoting specific types of practice and forms of policy. If that knowledge is stunted, stripped of its riches and whittled into slim proclamations, we run a real risk of embarking on inadequate or inappropriate action. And all the while, that clock would still be ticking.
* World Aids Day is on 1 December.
* Hein Marais is a South African writer and journalist. A former chief writer for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), his work is focused largely on AIDS and on political-economic issues. He is the author of South Africa: Limits to Change - The Political-economy of Transition (Zed Books/UCT Press). This article first appeared in the e-newsletter of the Isandla Institute, which can be visited at
* Please send comments to [email protected]
Background
That women and men enjoy the same rights and dignity has been confirmed by regional and international conventions and declarations including the United Nation’s (UN) Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The African Union (AU) has, in addition, reiterated its commitment to the same ideals through the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (The Charter) and recently, in specific terms, in the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on Rights of Women in Africa (The Protocol). As we mark the “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence”, November 25-December 10, 2004, it is important to look at how the Protocol, once it comes into force, will address gender-based violence in Africa.
Substantive norms of international law are defined in relation to men’s experience, and stated in terms of discrete violations of rights in the public realm. In addition, inattention to rights of particular interest to women in the international human rights discourse has resulted in neglect, and pervasive denial, of the rights of women in particular in the private sphere. Gender specific abuses of human rights such as gender-based violence have been widely perceived as women’s issues rather than as human rights concerns.
For instance, human rights guarantees in the legally binding United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) such as those to the right of life, to bodily integrity, and to be free from torture, cruel and degrading treatment, have not been interpreted to include such acts as domestic violence, rape, female genital mutilation, forced sterilization, forced childbirth, and numerous other forms in which violence against women and girls is manifested.
The provisions of the AU’s Charter are not adequate to address the rights of women. For example, while Article 18 prohibits discrimination against women, it does so only in the context of the family. In addition, explicit provisions guaranteeing the right of consent to marriage and equality of spouses during and after marriage are absent. These omissions are compounded by the fact that the Charter places emphasis on traditional African values and traditions without addressing concerns that many customary practices, such as female genital mutilation, violence against women, forced marriage, and wife inheritance, can be harmful or life threatening to women. By ignoring critical issues such as custom and marriage, the Charter inadequately defends women’s human rights. Thus the need for the Protocol to address African women’s concerns on gender-based violence as listed below.
Gender-Based Violence: African Women’s Concerns:
- Lack of understanding of gender-based violence and its root cause - unequal power relations between men and women, with efforts to address the issue very often being reactive, focusing on symptoms and consequences, not causes;
- Lack of legally binding international recognition of reproductive and sexual rights. The efforts have yet to achieve international recognition beyond Declarations, which only constitute ‘soft international law’ and are not legally binding. This is due to strong resistance from conservative states and religious organisations;
- Lack of states’ commitment to the application of national, regional and international instruments and agreements, which guarantee the protection, prevention and promotion of human rights. Most countries in Africa have not brought their domestic laws into conformity with their provisions;
- Lack of qualitative and quantitative research on women’s human rights issues in Africa and documentation of women’s human rights abuses, particularly in the private arena, such as rape, sexual harassment;
- The big gap between the provisions of the law and practice. Laws are not systematically enforced due to lack of gender sensitive enforcement agencies and procedures, making the rights inaccessible to the majority of women;
- Multiplicity of legal systems in Africa, and the conflict between civil, customary and religious laws, constitute a major challenge to the protection of women’s rights. Thus abuses on the rights of women, especially by private individuals remain endemic in spite of the law;
- The private/public dichotomy that is detrimental to women continues to exist. In most African countries, the same constitutional provisions that guarantee gender equality allow exceptions in the so-called “private law” areas of customary law, personal law and family law. Serious violations of women’s human rights such as gender-based violence and provisions that discriminate against them are found in that private sphere;
- Gender-based violence in Africa is on the increase due to poverty and conflict. Forms of violence include femicides, acid attacks, ritual murders, gang rapes, abduction, girl-child slavery, ritual rapes, military sexual slavery, cultism in tertiary institutions, trafficking in women and girls, mistreatment of widows;
- In conflict situations, gender-based abuses are not an accident of war, they constitute a deliberate strategy designed to intimidate or undermine and inflict deep and lasting damage on entire communities;
- Lack of efforts to reduce problems faced by women in refugee camps including lack of physical security and privacy, sexual exploitation, physical and mental illness, including HIV/AIDS;
- Vulnerability of refugee women and girls, particularly those with inadequate documentation or single and unaccompanied, to physical and sexual abuse during flight, on arrival in refugee camps and in the country of ultimate settlement. This gender dimension is not given consideration in humanitarian programmes;
- Women in Africa still remain vulnerable to harmful traditional practices and customs, many of which expose them to HIV/AIDS that has been devastating the continent.
Linking the Protocol to the Elimination of Gender-Based Violence in Africa
At the UN and AU levels, there have been efforts to address gender-based violence as discussed below:
- In 1993, the Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna emphasized, “The human rights of women and of the girl child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of the universal human rights”. It also emphasized that elimination of gender-based violence is a human-rights obligation upon states. This was the first attempt to address the marginalisation of women’s human rights from the work of the mainstream human rights bodies;
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1993 locates violence against women within the framework of violation of human rights obligations, categorizing it as an issue of inequality and discrimination against women, and sets out strategies that member states and United Nations agencies should employ to eliminate its occurrence;
- The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action with respect to gender-based violence calls for governments’ condemnation of gender-based violence and due diligence in the prevention, investigation and punishment of acts of gender-based violence, implementation of existing international standards with respect to violence against women, and the support of international mechanisms in that regard;
- Appointment of Special Rapporteurs on violence against women and women rights at the UN and AU respectively;
- The AU in 2003 adopted the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa to address African women’s human rights concerns.
The Protocol primarily complements the Charter and international human rights conventions by focusing on concrete actions and goals to grant women rights. It further domesticates CEDAW and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in the African context. The Protocol integrates legal and policy actions to comprehensively address gender-based violence. It further provides a legal mechanism for redress through the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights for violations of rights enshrined within it.
On gender-based violence, Articles 2, 3, 4, 5, 8,10, 11 and 13 of the Protocol are dedicated to concrete actions for State Parties. The Articles focus on: elimination of discrimination against women, right to dignity, the rights to life, integrity and security of the person, right to peace, right to justice and equal protection before the law, protection of women in armed conflict, economic and social welfare rights and elimination of harmful practices. Thus the Protocol offers Member States of the AU a comprehensive mechanism to implement legal and policy actions to eliminate gender-based violence according to regional and international human rights instruments they have already acceded to. Below are some of the legal and policy actions that have been recommended to governments to eliminate gender-based violence and as compared below, the Protocol has integrated all of them. They include to:
- harmonise national laws and constitutions in line with regional and international commitments and standards to avoid inconsistencies. Article 8 (f);
- establishment and support services to respond to the needs of survivors of gender-based violence and girls and assist towards full recovery and reintegration into society, including legal aid, economic support and livelihood assistance. Article 2 (2) (e) and (f). Article 5 (c). Article 8 (b);
- implement national legislation and policies prohibiting harmful customary or traditional practices and all other harmful practices that violate women’s and girls’ human rights. Article 2 (b) Article 5 (b) and d;
- ensure that women are safe at work by supporting measures that promote the creation of a workplace environment free from sexual harassment or other violence and ensure all employers to put in place policies designed to eliminate and deal effectively with harassment of women whenever it occurs in the workplace. Article 13 (c);
- research, document and disseminate information on women’s human rights violations to policy makers and all other stakeholders. The research should focus on root causes including external factors, extent, causes and data and statistics on its economic and social costs its consequences. Article 4 (2) c. Article 5 (a);
- introduce legal literacy programmes to make women aware of their rights and methods of seeking protection under the law. Article 8 (c);
- encourage, support and implement measures aimed at increasing the knowledge and understanding of gender-based violence and other violations of women’s human rights, through gender analysis and gender sensitive training for personnel in the administration of justice, law enforcement agencies, security, social and health care services and ensure their accountability. Article 4 (2) b. Article 8 (c);
- introduce participatory educational programmes on human rights, conflict resolution and gender equality, for women and men of all ages, beginning with boys and girls. Article 8 (c);
- formulate comprehensive and multidisciplinary and co-ordinated national plans, programmes or strategies, which will be widely disseminated, to eliminate violence against women and girls and provide targets for implementation and effective enforcement and monitoring mechanisms. Article 5 (a) Article 2 (2). Article 26, Article 27;
- enact and implement laws against trafficking in persons. They should also develop strong and effective national, regional and international co-operation to prevent and eliminate trafficking in women and girls, particularly for purposes of economic and sexual exploitation including prostitution. Article 2 (2) g;
- introduce public awareness and advocacy strategies seeking to make gender-based violence a critical concern to everyone. Article 2 (2);
- encourage promotion of media portrayals of women and men as cooperative and full partners. The notions that male violence against women is a natural expression of masculinity and that women are helpless and subordinate to men require constant challenge and not reinforcement. Article 13 (m);
- ensure that women particularly those who bear the brunt of conflict, are an integral and meaningful part of every peace process. They should be involved in all conflict prevention, resolution, and management efforts at all levels as provided for in the UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Article 10. Article 11;
- direct special attention to the long-term health needs of women affected by armed conflict. These include the psychological needs arising from trauma and the effects of violations of reproductive rights and HIV/AIDS infection. Article 2 (2) k. Article 10;
- recognize the interconnection of forms of gender-based violence with other forms of discrimination and introduce broad efforts aimed at increasing women's economic and social autonomy Article 2 (c) and (e). Article 13;
Conclusion
Gender-based violence is a crosscutting and complex phenomenon that needs to be tackled on all fronts. The Protocol provides a comprehensive mechanism for addressing gender-based violence in Africa. However, African women cannot access and use it for the full enjoyment, promotion and protection of their human rights, as it has not entered into force. It requires 15 ratifications to enter into force. However, only 4 member states of the AU have ratified it. Therefore, there is need to ensure that we remind all Member States of the AU to ratify it during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence in accordance with the commitment they made in the AU Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, 2004, to ratify it by the end of this year. To end impunity on the violation of African women’s human rights through gender-based violence, it is time for our leaders to walk the talk and ratify the Protocol.
* Mary Wandia is the Advocacy Officer with The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) E-mail: [email][email protected]
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Last Monday I participated in a segment of the BBC discussion Programme ‘Four Corners’. The topic I discussed with two other guests (one Portuguese and the other from The Netherlands) was whether the relationship between former colonies and former colonial masters can ever be rid of master-servant complexes. The immediate stimulus for the discussion was the tragic situation that has been long unfolding in that former shining star of former French colonies on the West Coast of Africa, Cote d'Ivore.
Needless to say that the three of us had divergent views (that's the whole purpose of a multi sided discussion, isn't it?). But our disagreements were not principally due to the obvious: That because the other two were Europeans and myself an African, one belonging to victims and the other a descendant of perpetrators, there were objective and subjective contradictions. No. We were all opposed to colonialism and agreed too that the consequences were generally bad for the victims regardless of who the colonizer was. But that's where the agreement stopped.
Our differences emerged as a result of what is happening today and what can be done. Both Europeans were rather sanguine about the impact of history on contemporary relations between the former colonies and their erstwhile colonial subjects. The Portuguese saw no direct influence for his country as could be found in former British or French colonies. Maybe because the Portuguese were the first to arrive in Africa and the last to be chased out! The Dutch representative also felt his country did not have much control in the former colonies.
Both of them however saw moral and political responsibility to intervene in their former colonies. The Portuguese chap even argued that, but for Portugal, who cared about Guinea-Bissau or Cape Verde? When I retorted that even if both countries were not important internationally or even regionally they mattered to Cape Verdians and people of Guinea-Bissau the man was still relentless, finally quipping that he was not even sure about that! A few seconds later he realized the incongruity of his colonialist template by qualifying the absurd claim with ‘I don't think the elite care’. But the genie was already out of the bottle. So powerful and consuming is the latter day missionary fervour of many in the West that they actually believe that they care more about Africa than Africans themselves. This ideology of being more Catholic than the pope is so pervasive that even many Africans share in it. On the surface the argument is so beguiling and dressed in humanitarian concerns that it is almost seductive. But it is only a latter day repackaging of the old imperialist ‘white man's burden’.
The relationship between former colonies and their former colonial masters need not necessarily be a continuing repackaging of the same colonial attitudes through neo-colonialism or present threatening recolonisation. Looking at the relationship between Britain and the USA today, especially Tony Blair's ‘America right or wrong’ servitude to Bush, many would have forgotten that America used to be a colony of the British. The relationship between Britain and the former white colonies of New Zealand, Australia and Canada are also different. And yes too the relationship with India is different say from that with Gambia or Sierra-Leone. Even within Africa I do not think that Britain can be presumptuous enough to take South Africa or Nigeria's cooperation for granted. The Italians can never dream of controlling Libya, which is their former colony. And the French or the Belgians cannot walk like former masters across present day Rwanda.
What makes African countries vulnerable to continuing manipulation by former colonial powers is their essentially unviable nature built as they were to serve foreign interests and mostly lacking in organic linkages and legitimacy among the peoples forcibly brought together in these artificial states. But more than the economic linkages, in many countries security and intelligence networks help in retaining metropolitan hold.
This is certainly more evident in many of the former French colonies where the added burden of the French cultural policy of assimilation made many of their elite think they were French. It must be said that there are so many elite in the former British colonies too who regard themselves as English and mimic the English in many ridiculous ways, including confused middle class elements who refuse to speak their African mother tongue to their children even in the home because they fear their English will suffer.
But generally the colonial cultural project seems more complete in former French colonies. That was why France has always had far greater neo-colonialist influence in her former colonies. In recent years it has gone into retreat - but old habits die hard hence the current situation in Ivory Coast. But that mess is made messier by the fact that Laurent Gbagbo's government and his leadership is that of a genocidaire yet to be put on trial.
However that situation can only be sorted out by the Ivorians themselves, their sub regional neighbours, the African Union and the support of the international community. A positive role for former colonialists is one in which they support African efforts if and when asked and not by justifying continuing imperialism with 'the need to do something'. Too many times that something has turned out to be nothing but old fashioned imperialism in new robes.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa
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Violence against women increases their vulnerability to HIV infection - meaning that if HIV prevention activities are to succeed they need to occur alongside other efforts that reduce violence against women and girls.
This is according to the just released UNAIDS Aids Epidemic Update 2004 that reports on the latest developments in the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. "We will not be able to stop this epidemic unless we put women at the heart of the response to Aids," UNAids' executive director, Peter Piot, reportedly said at the launch of the report.
The report shows that the total number of people living with HIV globally rose to an estimated 39.4 million in 2004, while the epidemic killed 3.1 million people in the past year. Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst-affected region, with 25.4 million people living with HIV at the end of 2004, compared to 24.4 million in 2002.
The report states that the AIDS epidemic is affecting women and girls in increasing numbers: "Women and girls make up almost 57% of all people infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, where a striking 76% of young people (aged 15-24 years) living with HIV are female."
Released just before International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the start of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence on November 25, the report notes that one of the main causes of this disproportionate impact on women is violence, citing evidence from Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa to highlight the link.
The Rwanda study quoted showed that HIV-positive women were more likely to have experienced a history of physical and sexual violence at the hands of male partners than were women without HIV. In Tanzania among women younger than 30 years in one Tanzanian city, HIV-positive women were more likely to have experienced physical or sexual violence. Meanwhile, at antenatal clinics in Soweto, South Africa, HIV infection was found to be more common in women who had been physically abused by their partners than in those who were not.
"Violence against women and girls is not a private matter, but a violation of basic human rights with significant economic and social consequences for families, communities and nations," said the report, which called for laws against such violence to be formulated and adopted, and for law enforcement structures to be adapted and officials trained to ensure such laws are implemented.
This backs up previous calls for women's rights to be given more attention in the fight against the epidemic and broader demands for women's rights to be enforced in Africa. For example, The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa spells out key policies to protect the rights of women, but so far has only been ratified by four African countries, with 15 ratifications needed for it come into force.
The UNAIDS report said that while a recent UNICEF survey found that up to 50% of young women in high-prevalence countries did not know the basic facts about AIDS, the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV infection was not only about ignorance but also stemmed from "their pervasive disempowerment".
"The plight of women and children in the face of AIDS underlines the need for realistic strategies that address the interplay between inequality - particularly gender inequality - and HIV."
Efforts to reverse the AIDS epidemic were unlikely to be successful until prevention efforts took into these inequalities that impacted on behaviour and choices. "If prevention efforts are to succeed in the long-run, they need to address the interplay between gender and socioeconomic inequality and vulnerability to HIV. Prevention activities need to take into account the unequal terms on which most women have to conduct their lives."
* Compiled by Pambazuka News from the report and other news items. For the full report, visit: http://www.unaids.org/wad2004/EPIupdate2004_html_en/epi04_00_en.htm
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Imagine for a moment that every single woman on the African continent was guaranteed an absolute right to peace and that the mechanisms existed for her to enforce that right should it be violated. It's a quantum leap of the imagination from a situation where millions of women are vulnerable to armed conflict, where rape is routinely used as a weapon of war by armed groups, where women suffer disproportionately from the effects of poverty, HIV/AIDS, discriminatory gender practices and other forms of oppression.
Make no mistake, we're a long, long way away from a situation where the rights of women are considered to be set in stone. Recently the Security Council considered the first Secretary-General's report on the state of implementation of Resolution 1325, which concluded that “thus far, the international community has not been able to prevent acts of violence against women from occurring during armed conflict.” Amnesty International pointed out at the time: “We are currently witnessing horrific levels of gender-based violence committed with impunity against women and girls in many conflict-affected countries.”
So in such a seemingly hopeless situation why bother with the host of international protocols, treaties and the like? Aren't they just idealistic statements that are never meant to be achieved, rhetoric for the politicians to sign as evidence of their hard work? We all know that the real balance of international power mitigates against the lofty ideals they contain ever being achieved. Perhaps this is the realistic viewpoint and there is no point in getting over-excited about the remote possibility that one day all women - and by implication all men - might one day live in peace.
And yet it must be possible to make that leap, it must be possible to somehow close the gulf, the disconnect between the reality and the paperwork. The thing is it’s not even in the realm of imagination anymore: The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa specifically guarantees women a right to peace. The Protocol goes further by guaranteeing the rights of refugees, by demanding that states reduce expenditure on guns and bombs, by calling for women to be present at the peace table and for states to introduce concrete measures to end violence against women. Once enough African countries ratify the protocol before the African Union, states will be obligated to enact legislation which gives voice to the rights outlined in the protocol. It is a long, long road, but it is possible to see a situation where those seemingly idealistic rights could be enforced.
What's the point of all this for the average citizen? Today is the start of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, an international campaign originating from the first Women's Global Leadership Institute in 1991. The dates November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women, and December 10, International Human Rights Day, were chosen in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights. This 16-day period also highlights other significant dates including December 1, which is World AIDS Day.
The 16 Days Campaign has been used as an organizing strategy by individuals and groups around the world to call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women by raising awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights issue at the local, national, regional and international levels; strengthening local work around violence against women; establishing a clear link between local and international work to end violence against women; providing a forum in which organizers can develop and share new and effective strategies; demonstrating the solidarity of women around the world organizing against violence against women; and creating tools to pressure governments to implement promises made to eliminate violence against women.
There's so much that can be done to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be. Find out what's happing in your area in relation to the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. Join in. Sign our petition calling for the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa that will be presented to African heads of state at an African Union summit in January. Tell them its important. Pambazuka News will be carrying editorials to highlight key dates during the 16 days. This week we have an article to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and our lead editorial is about World Aids Day. Next week we will have more articles relevant to the 16 days. The week after we will have an editorial on Human Rights day. Read the editorials. We’ll also be carrying a special section for news about the 16 days. Send us your news.
And if you absolutely can't find it in yourself to do something - anything - to support the rights of women just sit back and imagine for a moment that every single woman on the African continent was guaranteed an absolute right to peace and what a difference that would make. Maybe that will move you to something.
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IRIN has launched a new HIV/AIDS news service in French as a complement to its PlusNews English language service. Both services provide news and valuable resources for those working in or concerned with sub-Saharan Africa.
* Editorial: With World Aids Day on December 1, all is not well in the fight against the epidemic, says Hein Marais.
* Comment and Analysis: International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women Feature
- Mary Wandia from Femnet tells African leaders to end open season on the Rights of Women in Africa and ratify the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa
- You’ve got 16 days, 384 hours, 23040 minutes, 1382400 seconds to imagine peace
- Ending violence against women is key to the fight against Aids
* 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence: A special section for news and activities related to 25 November to 10 December
* Letters: Aid rage and Band Aids
* Pan-African Postcard: Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem explores the old habits of colonial powers in relation to their former colonies
* Conflicts and Emergencies: International policy towards peace in Sudan is stabilising but threats remain, says the latest Justice Africa briefing
* Elections and Governance: Mnangagwa thwarted in race for vice-presidency as Mugabe rules on to 2009
* Development: Guinea meeting says no to EU Economic Partnership Agreements
* Land and Land Rights: A December meeting plans to launch a global campaign against damaging World Bank land policies
* Books and Art: A review of the film ‘Marcel King is Dead’ from the website of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Natal
Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade has summed up the achievements of Africa's economic recovery plan: "Nothing. Whenever I am asked what we have done, it is meetings, meetings. We need action." The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), a home-grown economic initiative to boost foreign investment and aid to the world's poorest continent, is struggling to make an impact three years after its launch.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 183: NAMIBIAN ELECTIONS: OVER BEFORE IT BEGAN - BUT WHERE ARE THE FRUITS OF LIBERATION?
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 183: NAMIBIAN ELECTIONS: OVER BEFORE IT BEGAN - BUT WHERE ARE THE FRUITS OF LIBERATION?
This is the author's semi-fictional autobiography, written in the third person, following in the tradition of Camara Laye's African Child, Wole Soyinka's trilogy (Ake, Isara, Ibadan) and Tanure Ojaide's Great Boys: An African Childhood. The narrative describes the author's birth and childhood in Igbotako, education and career at the University of Lagos and at universities in the States. Throughout, the author is concerned with the historical junctures and social and cultural changes in postcolonial Nigeria.
Armed opposition groups have been urged by the Ethiopian government to lay down their weapons and democratically contest the forthcoming national elections. The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) said that political power only "comes only from the ballot box". In a statement issued by the information ministry on Saturday, the government said "creating a democratic government by the people and for the people" fosters development.
The Zambian government has defended its decision to ban an NGO because its activities pose "a danger to state security". The Southern African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (SACCORD) was informed of the government's decision via a short letter from Minister of Home Affairs Ronnie Shikapwasha. In the letter to SACCORD, a copy of which was faxed to IRIN, Shikapwasha says he has "noticed with displeasure that your organisation has engaged itself in activities which are [inimical] and a danger to the state security" and that, in accordance with the Societies Act, "I have decided to de-register your organisation with immediate effect".
An African Union (AU) delegation that is due to attend the UN Security Council meeting this week will hold consultations with members of the Council on how to strengthen cooperation between the two organisations, the pan-African body said in a statement. The Council will meet in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Thursday and Friday to discuss conflict resolution in Sudan and the peace process in Somalia.
Amnesty International has said it is concerned about reported statements by government officials suggesting that crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Northern Uganda would be addressed in traditional reconciliation procedures, rather than in fair trials before independent and impartial courts in accordance with international law and standards. "Uganda cannot 'withdraw' its referral, in January 2004, to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) of the situation in the northern part of the country," the organization declared.
Hundreds of people from a diversity of backgrounds came together this week to protest the installation of pre-paid water meters in Soweto and other townships. The march was organized by the coalition Organizations Against Prepaid Water that included amongst others the Anti-Privatisation Forum, the Community Independent Development Forum, Independent Baptists, Jubilee, SOPA, PAC, the Coalition Against Water Privatisation and taxi associations. Gathering at Mary Fitzgerald Square, itself an emblem of the Johannesburg Development Agency’s neoliberal city restructuring, the protestors made their way to the Civic Centre to deliver a memorandum to Mayor Amos Masondo. The memorandum listed a host of grievances about pre-paid meters, most importantly the fact that pre-paid meters allow Johannesburg Water (JW), and companies like it, to implement the harshest form of “cost recovery” – automatic self-disconnection.
The City of Johannesburg has been presented with an innovative programme to address child poverty and early childhood development - that would also regenerate local economies by enabling poor communities and thus parents to earn money in the process. It builds upon Education Minister Naledi Pandor's announcement that funds for the Child Nutrition Programme must from now be used to buy food grown locally and not simply imported from wholesalers. The City Council called for a comprehensive plan to meet the needs of the 300,000 plus children aged 0 to 5 living the city. The majority experience extreme poverty and neglect. The proposal comes from a developmental consortium of New Economics innovators, Wits academics, and early childhood development experts.
A senior member of an African observer group monitoring Namibia's elections had his own election in Zimbabwe's 2000 poll annulled because of violent intimidation in his constituency, according to court records, reports South Africa's The Star newspaper. Shadreck Chipanga, a former director of Zimbabwe's notorious secret police, was identified by witnesses as being at the wheel of a pick-up truck carrying ruling-party supporters who disembowelled a young man on the bonnet of the vehicle. The Namibian Society for Human Rights has issued a statement over the controversy.
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Developing countries will enjoy their best year of economic growth in 2004, producing a "spectacular" drop in poverty around the world, the World Bank said this week. But Sub-Saharan Africa remained the global laggard because of its vulnerability to oil prices and more fundamental issues of ineffective economic structures and inefficient government spending, the Bank said, which would only partly be offset by further aid flows and debt forgiveness. The report also warned that the growing trend towards regional trade agreements between countries, rather than multilateral trade deals, were not necessarily a panacea for developing countries' problems.