PAMBAZUKA NEWS 120: AFRICAN UNION ADOPTS PROTOCOL ON THE RIGHTS OF AFRICAN WOMEN
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 120: AFRICAN UNION ADOPTS PROTOCOL ON THE RIGHTS OF AFRICAN WOMEN
A household-level recovery from the past year's food security crisis in Malawi is being complicated by deepening levels of poverty, observers say. In a recent interview with IRIN in the capital Lilongwe, World Food Programme (WFP) country representative, Gerard van Dijk, said "poverty, combined with HIV/AIDS" had worsened household vulnerability.
President Mwai Kibaki has pledged to be the first to declare his wealth once the various administrative procedures are in place. "I have offered to be the first to declare my wealth and that is real," said Kibaki. The President said the Public Officer Ethics Act, under which all public servants are expected to declare their assets and liabilities, aims at bringing about cultural change in the public service.
The Federal Government has joined hands with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) to develop the Strategy for Acceleration of Girls Education in Nigeria (SAGEN), a plan of action designed to ensure that equal number of boys and girls were in the education system by 2005.
Wealthy nations and international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have become the central economic planners for Africa. The result is sporadic project implementation; corruption; poor economic performance attributable to inept policies; political tensions as each ethnic community jostles to partake of the "national cake"; and disaster unpreparedness due to donor anaesthesia, writes James S. Shikwati in South Africa's The Star newspaper. Shikwati is director of the Kenyan-based Inter Regional Economic Network (Iren).
Knowledge is key to an effective anti-corruption strategy. The Southern African Corruption Information Centre – Online is the first portal of its kind on the African continent. It aims to provide policy-makers, researchers, activists, academics, the media as well as public and private sector officials with access to material on corruption as well as strategies to combat graft and corruption. The centre provides information with a specific Southern African focus. A search function makes available over 500 abstracted documents which include legal documents, government/civil society reports, journal articles and conference papers.
Kenyans are smuggling rare cactus plants from Somalia to Western countries where they are used to make body lotions. The Lusaka Agreement Task Force Chief Intelligence Officer, Mr Clement Mwale, said they are investigating the poachers whom he said are sophisticated operators.
Several organisations have pledged support for the Government in rehabilitating street children. Eleven non-governmental organisations dealing with children said they would begin programmes to support street families. Their representatives said they would form an alliance with private companies to ensure more than 1,500 children countrywide were rehabilitated.
This paper investigates the national and community level interventions that offer promise for increasing primary education access for children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable in areas heavily affected by AIDS in the eastern and southern Africa region. Some of the lessons learnt are that: Initiatives should target all vulnerable children in AIDS-affected areas and should create affordable schooling opportunities; non-formal education should be prioritised in addition to formal education and that initiatives should be developed with community participation and cater to community needs.
A programme to rehabilitate more than 7,000 child soldiers who fought in Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war is in danger of stalling because of a serious shortfall in funding, the UN children's fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday. UNICEF said that US $1.4 million is needed immediately and a further $2.5 million would be required in the "near future" if their critical re-education and re-training programmes were to be completed.
The launch of the UN Literacy Decade was yet another in a series of international pledges to provide education to all. Time and again, in the past two decades, an atmosphere of urgency to achieve education goals has been created. And yet, each time, these pledges have met with very little commitment and action.
Women unionists from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) met from 14 to 18 July in Maputo, Mozambique, to analyse gender policies in their countries. According to an Angolan official, because the Southern Africa Trade Unions (SATUC) does not have a gender policy as yet, discussion was based on the rate of accomplishment of the commitment of SADC's heads of State and Government to gender representation.
africa: Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability, and the State
The orthodox definition of international security puts human displacement and refugees at the periphery. In contrast, the publication Refugees and Forced Displacement demonstrates that human displacement can be both a cause and a consequence of conflict within and among societies. As such, the management of refugee movements and the protection of displaced people should be an integral part of security policy and conflict management.
This paper argues that achievement of the Millennium Development Goals of Education for All (EFA) by 2015 will not only require a level of international resources and commitment not yet seen, but will also require better tools for monitoring educational progress at the country level. The authors estimate that more than 37 million young adolescents aged 10-14 in sub-Saharan Africa will not complete primary school. Their estimates are based on data from nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys from 26 countries, collectively representing 83 percent of the sub-Saharan youth population.
On 11 July 2003, the African Union adopted the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, a supplementary protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, which was adopted in 1981. Advancing the human rights of African women through creative, substantive and detailed language, the new Protocol covers a broad range of human rights issues. For the first time in international law, it explicitly sets forth the reproductive right of women to medical abortion when pregnancy results from rape or incest or when the continuation of pregnancy endangers the health or life of the mother. In another first, the Protocol explicitly calls for the legal prohibition of female genital mutilation.
In other equality advances for women, the Protocol calls for an end to all forms of violence against women including unwanted or forced sex, whether it takes place in private or in public, and a recognition of protection from sexual and verbal violence as inherent in the right to dignity. It endorses affirmative action to promote the equal participation of women, including the equal representation of women in elected office, and calls for the equal representation of women in the judiciary and law enforcement agencies as an integral part of equal protection and benefit of the law. Articulating a right to peace, the Protocol also recognizes the right of women to participate in the promotion and maintenance of peace.
The broad range of economic and social welfare rights for women set forth in the Protocol includes the right to equal pay for equal work and the right to adequate and paid maternity leave in both private and public sectors. It also calls on states to take effective measures to prevent the exploitation and abuse of women in advertising and pornography. The rights of particularly vulnerable groups of women, including widows, elderly women, disabled women and "women in distress," which includes poor women, women from marginalized population groups, and pregnant or nursing women in detention, are specifically recognized.
Equality Now, an international human rights organisation, convened a meeting in January 2003 of African women's rights activists to facilitate a collective review of the draft and coordinated advocacy for the adoption of a text that would truly advance the rights of African women in international law. Subsequent concerted lobbying of African governments by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and networks all over Africa on a consensus text resulted in significant gains to the original draft. The Africa Office of Equality Now, based in Nairobi, acted as a liaison with the African Union to push for expert discussion of the Protocol as well as strong NGO representation in the process.
The final Protocol is indicative of the achievements that can be made when governments and civil society use their collective resources to advance the cause of human rights. "The adoption of this Protocol marks a significant step forward in promoting the rights of women within Africa and we hope lays the groundwork for further gains for all women around the world," said Faiza Jama Mohamed, Equality Now's Africa Regional Director.
A new amendment to the 1998 Land Act in Uganda takes a small step toward women obtaining land rights. The issue is expected to remain on the national agenda, however, as candidates for president position themselves to gain the women's vote.
Apartheid, it seems, works. Nearly 10 years since racial segregation was abolished in South Africa, identity is still rooted in race. Or so it would appear from the case of Happy Sindane, the blond Ndebele-speaking boy who walked into a police station last month saying he had been abducted from his white family by their black cleaner at the age of six and brought up among blacks. He asked the police to help him find his white parents. The story was presented, to the fury of black commentators, as that of a lost white boy who had walked, Tarzan-like, out of the jungle. The courts demolished the fantasy last week after DNA tests established that Happy had at least one black parent.
Ten NGOs have sent a joint memorandum to World Trade Organisation members on the need to improve internal transparency and participation in the organisation. The Memo highlights many things wrong with the decision-making system and gives concrete proposals. This issue looms large as the Cancun Ministerial approaches. If not changed, the untransparent process will result in an anti-development outcome in Cancun. The memorandum was prepared by: The Third World Network, Oxfam International, Public Services International, WWF International, The Centre for International Environmental Law, Focus on the Global South, The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, The Africa Trade Network, The International Gender and Trade Network, and The Tebtebba International Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Rights.
In South Africa, post-secondary education is a privilege, and many students currently enrolled in universities are the first in their families to reach for it. Degrees are also one of only a few tickets to upward mobility, and students endure enormous economic and personal pressures to graduate. "Campus cultures are places in which the stakes are high," says Dr Jane Bennett, gender researcher and director of the African Gender Institute, based at the University of Cape Town.
This paper investigates the origins and current operation of the Amadiba Horse and Hiking Trail, a community-based initiative located on South Africa's Wild Coast. The trail project presents itself as a people-centred project, designed to involve the Amadiba people in all aspects of running a project including planning, implementation, management and decision making. The benefits from the project are intended to accrue primarily to the Amadiba community.
Big business is lobbying hard to get the outcome it wants at the Cancun WTO Ministerial Meeting. The World Development Movement's new action calls on the UK and EU to base trade policy on the needs of poor communities, developing countries and the environment rather than on the demands of big business and corporate lobbies. Join the call to put people before profits.
Human rights defenders in the Democratic Republic of Congo are under increasing attack, Human Rights Watch says in a newly-released backgrounder on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. In the past few years, the main rebel groups and the previous DRC government have been responsible for intimidating and harassing those who have exposed human rights abuses. But the new transitional government in Kinshasa offers the chance to break this pattern, Human Rights Watch said.
A new guide provides a comparative analysis and factual guide to refugee law throughout Southern Africa, including in-depth country guides for Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The new publication 'A Reference Guide to Refugee Law and Issues in Southern Africa' is produced by The Legal Resources Foundation (Zambia - http://www.lrf.org.zm/ ), the Legal Resources Centre South Africa ( http://www.lrc.org.za/) and the Zambia Civic Education Association. It is hoped that the guide will be a wealth of information in the areas of domestic and international refugee law, as well as the factual situation of refugees across Southern Africa.
This report - from the Southern African Regional Poverty Network - highlights the ways in which different mobile populations are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, and draws together some of the policies and programmes that governments, employers, unions and NGOs have put in place. Since different mobile populations are vulnerable to HIV infection at different stages of mobility, the report formulates recommendations for each stage of the mobility process.
This UNAIDS monograph documents the first large-scale AIDS and STI intervention programme to be implemented during a refugee crisis. It describes the operational aspects of the intervention, the observed impact and the effect this experience had on policies and practices in other refugee situations, among both international and nongovernmental organisations.
A halt to extraction and trade of Liberian gold, diamonds and timber would help stop the fighting that has killed at least 600 civilians in the capital in the past five days, according to the Environmental Lawyers Association of Liberia and two other nongovernmental organisations.
Population growth rates in developed and developing countries are becoming increasingly skewed, posing challenges to governments worldwide, according to the 2003 World Population Data Sheet released on Tuesday. Published by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau (PRB), the survey estimates a 193 percent population increase in Central Africa--the fastest-growing region in the first half of the 21st century--compared to a mere 6 percent gain in Northern Europe and a population decline in the rest of Europe.
Patrick Bond
In addition to the pomp and ceremony associated with the second post-apartheid state visit by a U.S. president, a string of protests greeted George W. Bush when he met South African president Thabo Mbeki in Pretoria on July 9. It was a complicated welcome from many perspectives. South Africa had not joined the "coalition of the willing" against Saddam Hussein, and former president Nelson Mandela remains a staunch opponent of Bush's foreign policy. On the other hand, Pretoria profited nicely from the hostilities, not merely through selling arms but also by taking advantage of Bush's attempt to restore some legitimacy on this trip. Mbeki's muddled reaction to the U.S.-led war on Hussein's Iraq deserves a review, because continuing ambivalence in the political sphere is contradicted by closer U.S.-South African economic relationships that threaten the rest of Africa.
Many Malawians living with HIV/AIDS are forced to rely on illegal drugs in a bid to treat opportunistic illnesses, ease suffering and prolong their lives. Some of the fake drugs have flooded the country's parallel market with a potentially disastrous health impact.
In the early hours of a cold morning, the streets of Lusaka are thronging with people rushing to work. I pass through a coffee shop on my way to the office and as I sip the hot brew my attention is drawn to two elderly women who work as sweepers for the Lusaka City Council (LCC). Eavesdropping in on their conversation, I soon discover that they are talking about the challenges that women continue to face in their pursuit of equality.
The impoverished West African nation of Burkina Faso is giving serious consideration to planting genetically modified cotton due to the destruction of nearly half its crop seeds annually by caterpillars resistant to pesticides.
''They say oil is spurting out of the ground, but I haven't seen it yet,” says Faustin Gayande, a young man from the Chadian capital of N'djamena. He fears the oil revenue will not trickle down to the poor as a result of corruption and political repression. “There is a proverb from my area which says that when you catch a silurid, you've got to grab it by the head if you want to hang onto it; if you hold it by the tail, it could slip away. So Chadian oil is like a silurid because I haven't been able to grab it,'' says Gayande.
Exhilda Natogma (Not real name) is a nurse at a mission hospital of one of the popular Pentecostal churches in Madina a suburb of Accra, the capital city of Ghana. Exhilda fell in love with one of her church elders who was studying at a professional Institute in Accra. After six months of a hot romance, Exhilda discovered that she was pregnant and the Elder quickly suggested an abortion.
Increasingly desperate for food and pleading for evacuation, hundreds of Sierra Leonean refugees jammed the UNHCR compound in war-ravaged Monrovia on Wednesday amid continued fighting between government troops and rebels.
Does the Internet have the potential to accelerate development in poor nations? Or is it an innovation that will widen the gap between wealthy and poor countries? This paper places the Internet in a framework of major innovations in modern economic history that have contributed to increased global economic inequality.
The general response by black Zimbabweans to the dire conditions in which they try to survive, and to the hate-speech against minorities with which they are daily bombarded, must constitute final, irrevocable proof that apartheid was unjustified and unjustifiable. The overall refusal by Zimbabweans to give way to hate-crimes against officially-designated scapegoats - whites, Jews, Asians, homosexuals - is the great "positive" news, to which the media do not give sufficient prominence.
The Battle in Seattle brought to the world's attention a new global resistance movement that was not only made possible by the Internet but, as Naomi Klein has deftly pointed out, was shaped in its image. Sharing the Internet's architecture of interconnected hubs and spokes, the new movement was a coalition of coalitions, a decentralized network of campaigns "intricately and tightly linked to one another."
Usakos residents took to the streets after the water supply to two of the town's suburbs was cut by 50 per cent. Water debts owed by residents, mostly from Hakhaseb and Erongosig, already total 2,5 Namiban million.
A 40-year-old man has become the first Cameroonian to be sentenced for trying to sell a female baby chimpanzee, nine years after a law prohibiting trade in endangered animals was passed. Opinion is varied on whether the sentence will have any impact on the sale and consumption of bush meat.
South Africa has still not found a buyer for the 30 tons of ivory it wants to sell. The country was last year given the go-ahead by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) to do a once-off sale of its ivory stockpile. But the discovery of a huge illegal haul of ivory from Africa has sparked fears that poaching is on the rise on the continent since the Cites decision. The ivory, valued at more than R700 000, came from Mali and arrived at Bangkok International Airport last Monday.
"Today" newspaper editor Masautso Phiri and reporter Wilfred Zulu may face contempt of court charges following a 3 July 2003 application to the Lusaka High Court by lawyers representing Vice President Nevers Mumba. The charge is connected to an article published by the weekly in its 11 to 17 June edition entitled, "Is Chief Justice Sakala compromised on Nevers Mumba?" The article commented on a High Court case in which an opposition member of parliament, Edith Nawakwi, is challenging the legality of Mumba's 28 May appointment as vice president.
Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has appealed to all sides in the fighting in Liberia to avoid harming journalists after a French photographer, Patrick Robert, was seriously wounded in the chest and arm during clashes on 19 July 2003 between government and rebel forces on the outskirts of Monrovia.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed outrage at the five-year sentence given to Donatien Nyembo Kimuni, Lubumbashi correspondent for the Kinshasa-based private weekly La Tribune, on a charge of defamation. The charge stemmed from a June 5 La Tribune article by Kimuni titled, "Congo Mineral: Workers Are Paid Poorly and Exploited." According to journalists at La Tribune, Kimuni had based his article on a report from a public mining firm and the testimony of local miners who alleged that Congo Mineral, a private mining company, provided poor working conditions for its employees.
Acting on a United Nation's (UN) request, Switzerland has frozen two million Swiss francs (?1,3 million, $1,5-million) in the bank accounts of two associates of Liberian President Charles Taylor, the Swiss justice ministry said on Wednesday. The move followed a request by the UN-backed court investigating war crimes in Sierra Leone last month, which triggered a search of Swiss banks for any assets linked to the Liberian leader.
Activist Trevor Ngwane speaks about South Africa as vanguard of post-colonial neoliberalism, and laboratory of its social consequences. From the townships around Johannesburg, Ngwane describes the rebellion against the privatizations of the ANC regime, and the enrichment of a new political class.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has threatened to hit his opponents with "the full wrath of the law" if they tried to destabilise the nation. He said this on Tuesday just hours after Zimbabwe's opposition party offered a political truce with the government. Before Mugabe delivered his speech, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) announced that its lawmakers would not boycott Mugabe's speech - as they usually do - but would remain in parliament as part of an effort to build goodwill to end the political standoff.
The Supply Initiative: meeting the need for reproductive health supplies, has a new monthly newsletter that provides updates on the Supply Initiative activities, as well as news, materials and events related to condom and contraceptive shortages.
Transitional government officials designated by the two principal former rebel movements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) took their oath of office on Thursday in the capital, Kinshasa, after a modification was made in the pledge of allegiance. Fourteen ministers and eight vice-ministers from the two groups - the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) and the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) - had refused to take the oath of office on Friday because it required a pledge of allegiance to President Joseph Kabila, but not to the institutions and laws of the country.
Food shortages grew more accute in the Liberian capital Monrovia on Wednesday as rebel forces continued pounding the city centre with mortar fire and the United Nations warned that its one million population faced a humanitarian tragedy.
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Pambazuka News is taking a holiday for the next few weeks. We will be back in your inbox on August 28. Meanwhile, we hope you have a good rest while we are away.
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PAMBAZUKA NEWS 119: NEPAD AND ENERGY: TURNING OUT THE LIGHTS
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 119: NEPAD AND ENERGY: TURNING OUT THE LIGHTS
The South African man’s reputation is in crisis. He is held responsible for one of the world’s highest rape rates, including the rape of children and babies. He perpetrates domestic violence, which is commonplace. And womanisers who prefer condom-less sex are driving the HIV/AIDS epidemic, experts tell us. A range of researchers grappling with what has, and is, framing this male identity have identified economic circumstances, the new political order and HIV/AIDS as important factors.
The head of the main rebel group in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has officially announced the end of his movement's five-year war against the Kinshasa-based government, the rebel group said on Saturday.
The second African Union (AU) summit in Maputo was drawing to a close on Saturday after two days of deliberation where heads of state elected new leaders responsible for the day-to-day running of the organisation.
Abductions, torture, recruitment of child soldiers, and other abuses have sharply increased in the past year in northern Uganda due to renewed fighting between Ugandan government forces and rebels, a coalition of national and international organisations said in a report released this week.
A landmark report released last week calls for fundamental changes in how decisions are made concerning the world’s natural resources. The report, World Resources 2002-2004: Decisions for the Earth – Balance, Voice, and Power, stresses the urgent need for such changes to arrest the accelerating deterioration of the world’s environment and to address the crisis of global poverty.
Aids activists have questioned U.S. President George W. Bush's purported commitment to fighting the pandemic, asking whether his policies were aimed more at helping leading drugs companies. "Is the pharmaceutical industry running your Aids programme? And does it want to run ours too?" the Ugandan Access to Essential Medicines Coalition asked in an open letter to the US leader, a day ahead of his trip to the east African country.
The Central African Republic is trying to ditch its reputation as a smuggler's den and has taken a key step towards cleaning up its diamond industry. This week at an international conference in Bangui, CAR joined the Kimberley Process, a global initiative aimed at ending trade in so-called "blood diamonds" by establishing that exported gems have not come from conflict areas.
An animal rights coalition filed a lawsuit last Thursday aimed at stopping the import of 11 African elephants to two U.S. zoos. The Save Wild Elephants Coalition, which has been fighting for months to keep the elephants in their natural habitat in Africa, filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenging permits issued this week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The development of a vaccine against malaria could be five to eight years away, a leading researcher says. "We will try to shorten that, but it is not going to be easy,” Prof. Adrian Hill, a Wellcome Trust research fellow at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford told media representatives.
Kenya's National AIDS Control Council, the agency that coordinates the country's response to the AIDS epidemic, has recently cut off funding to four fraudulent nongovernmental AIDS organisations and is investigating another 10 organisations, the New York Times reports.
In the latest issue, CIVICUS looks into education and civil society, including: Universal Primary Education in Uganda and Pakistan; Save the Children refurbishes schools in Zimbabwe; Gender disparity in education. To subscribe email [email protected]
This blog collects knowledge on the world of non-government organisations (NGOs). A specific theme is to improve the world by mapping the NGO world.
The petro-military-commerce safari that George Bush embarked upon last week may well succeed in the areas that progressive critics fear most, writes Johannesburg-based academic and activist Patrick Bond. First, the imperial-subimperial nexus in South Africa and Nigeria will tighten. Second, the possibility of increased US military activity on the continent will increase in some areas with bases in West Africa and the Horn of Africa to guard oil fields and lesson in others.
Both the government of Liberia and Liberian rebel forces are responsible for violations of international humanitarian law amounting to war crimes and other serious human rights abuses, according to a briefing before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus. "Tens of thousands of Liberians have been forcibly displaced and hundreds if not thousands of civilians have been killed, either deliberately or in crossfire. Recent human rights abuses committed by both sides include the forced recruitment of children in displaced and refugee camps, forced labour, assault, and sexual violence against civilians, as well as attacks on humanitarian workers," said Washington Director for Africa of Human Rights Watch Janet Fleischman.
In African tradition an important visitor is welcomed with drums, dancing and singing. But, says this press release from Health Rights Action Group in Uganda, the arrival of U.S. President George W. Bush in Uganda was more likely to be received with mothers wailing for the loss of their children. In this context - and with tears rolling down his cheeks - President Bush should leave Africa with the $3 billion cheque for 2004 to fight AIDS signed and an immediate plan to put more money into the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and Malaria.
"Whilst we applaud President Bush's visit to this part of the world, his stance and commitment to HIV/AIDS treatment, as well as his US$15 billion financial package to help with treatment in Africa and the Caribbean, we are also painfully aware that Zimbabwe is not listed as a recipient of the President's philanthropy. We are in no doubt of the fact that the exclusion of this country is linked to the relentless and persistent human rights abuses in this country, and the explicit demands by Washington that democracy and good governance be restored."
Nigerian HIV/AIDS activists under the aegis of the Treatment Action Movement (TAM), a coalition of civil society groups working in the area of HIV/AIDS treatment and care, have called on U.S. President George W. Bush to ensure that his AIDS policies are not merely rhetoric, but focus on improving the quality of lives of the continent's 30 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
Nigerian civil society groups have called for a review of the United States government's foreign and oil policy. In an open letter to the visiting United States President George W. Bush, the groups said America's foreign and oil policy currently served only the interests of powerful corporations. The groups specifically opposed plans by the U.S. to deploy troops to guard Nigerian oil installations. For four decades Western oil companies operating in Nigeria had reduced the once balanced and life-sustaining Niger Delta to a "veritable nightmare".
An "angry and disappointed" Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) on Sunday leaked the key findings of a secret government report, kept under wraps for months, which says that 1,7 million lives can be saved by 2010 if Aids drugs are given to everyone needing them. This comes after months of frustration among health care workers and activists, who say they have lost patience with the government's apparent ambivalence over anti-retroviral drug programmes.
Renewed fighting between rebels and government forces in Burundi erupted in the capital Bujumbura this week, leaving streets littered with bodies and doubts about a peace process intended to end almost 10 years of civil war.
Related Link:
* Zuma arrives in Bujumbura as UN withdraws nonessential staff
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=35449
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Liberia has ended a campaign to vaccinate 128,000 children under five years old and 230,000 women of child-bearing age around the capital, Monrovia, despite the recent escalation in fighting between government troops and rebels.
The main Liberian rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), has warned against the planned deployment of 1,500 ECOWAS peacekeepers in the war-torn country prior to the departure of President Charles Taylor into exile.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) repatriated last Thursday 197 Republic of Congo refugees from neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), following assurances from Brazzaville authorities that their safety would be guaranteed.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) repatriated 334 more refugees from neighbouring Gabon to the Republic of Congo, the agency's refugee protection officer in Brazzaville told IRIN last Friday.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the Central African Republic (CAR) has set aside 10 million francs CFA (US $17,988) to assist some 2,000 people who have returned home since June, the agency's country representative, Emile Segbor, told IRIN on Thursday.
President Mwai Kibaki has called on African countries to unite against corruption, tribalism and poverty, which he termed enemies of unity in the continent. The President said most of Africa's problems were caused by poor governance.
African leaders meeting in Mozambique last week for the second African Union (AU) summit said the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis (TB) was a priority for the continent, and a new regional effort which would demand greater financial support from the international community was needed.
When Asha Ahmed Abdalla was a teenager in her native country of Somalia, she used to daydream about what it would be like to be Somalia’s first lady, and decided to set her sights on achieving that goal. But Abdalla grew up and her dream evolved. After years of humanitarian and political activity, the 45-year-old mother of three has set her eyes on the ultimate prize: to become Africa’s first woman president.
Sharp divisions between member states of the African Union (AU) attending the grouping’s second summit led to Zimbabwe being left out of the agenda as the organisers tried to avoid anything that could further divide the 53-member body already riven by serious disagreements.
Chad, one of the world's poorest countries, is set to join the elite club of oil-producing nations Tuesday as black gold begins flowing into a pipeline towards a terminal in the Atlantic Ocean off Cameroon. The multi-billion dollar project, co-funded by the World Bank and a consortium of oil companies led by ExxonMobil, is expected to generate up to 250,000 barrels of oil a day when it reaches full operating capacity. But promises of riches for the landlocked desert country of eight million, where per capita income is well under a dollar a day, have met with scepticism among environmental and human rights groups, as well as opposition groups who fear that little of the newfound oil wealth will trickle down to the poor.
The UN refugee agency has said it planned to launch a special appeal for funds to cover unforeseen needs in seven different African countries, none of which has received much international attention.
Much of last Friday's proceedings at the Maputo heads of state summit of the African Union (AU) was dominated by discussions, behind closed doors, of the conflicts that have raged in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Ivory Coast and others.
The Acting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has welcomed the decision taken at the recently concluded African Union Summit in Mozambique to strengthen women's rights by adding gender specific provisions to an existing charter. "The adoption by the African Union of a specific treaty on the rights of women reinforces the message that women's rights require priority attention in the protection of universal and inalienable rights," Bertrand Ramcharan said in a statement from Geneva.
On his first week back from his whirlwind trip across Africa, President George W. Bush will have a lot of explaining to do. Visiting UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will want to know what the U.S. president is prepared to do in war-torn Liberia. Annan and many in Congress, as well as AIDS activists both here and in Africa, also want to know whether Bush is prepared to push Congress to approve the full US$3 billion dollars for fiscal year 2004 as the first instalment of his $15 billion emergency program to fight AIDS in Africa.
The 50 or so laughing children playing in the mud on a hot, rainy day deep in Guinea’s remote Forest Region are mostly younger than 12 years old, and, although small for their age, seem reasonably healthy. The mud, their youth, and giggles are not the only things they share in common, however. Each are abandoned children that were forced to flee the orphanage they called home when the northeastern Liberian border town of Ganta turned into a war zone earlier this year. They also have another commonality that bonds them; each child is now a refugee in a foreign land, attempting to again restart their already broken lives.
Approximately 18.6 million people in East and Southern Africa were HIV-positive at the end of 2002, according to World Health Organisation statistics presented last week at a WHO workshop in Harare, Zimbabwe, Xinhua News Agency reports.
The letter (PAMBAZUKA NEWS 118: OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH) and the following links and news items are a brilliant summary of the state of African politics and human rights at this point in time. Helen Wangusa's letter to Bush is a masterpiece of insight and analysis into the shameful manipulation of the media for political purposes that is driving the American agenda in Africa. There are many more problems in Africa than can be covered in this one newsletter, and I would like to take this opportunity to recommend subscription to Pambazuka News to everyone interested in human rights.
Michael Carmichael
The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs, UK
I read with satisfaction and excitement word by word the "Open Letter to President Bush” (see PAMBAZUKA 118). I include myself as an endorser of such a detailed and well-assessed letter which touches on a lot of the subjects that affect the work, aspirations and hearts of many Africans longing for continental prosperity. However, I was disappointed that the writers ignored African-Americans, who are a strategic and powerful constituency for Africa in the United States. As continental Africans, we share ancestral, historical, societal and economic sameness with African-Americans even though we may live on two different continents. African activists and civil society - especially those engaged in changing US/Africa relations - have an obligation to involve and tap the powerful voices of African-Americans.
The Anti-Eviction Campaign, a group that campaigns against the forced removal of people from their homes, says it is “saddened and disturbed” by recent events, including a spate of arrests, to hit the community of Mandela Park in the Western Cape, which comprises thousands of old people who are all facing eviction.
A petition from the NGO Gender Co-ordination Network to State President Bakili Muluzi calls for greater women's participation in political and decision-making structures. By signing the petition, you will participate in a chance-of-a-lifetime opportunity to actively support in the SADC Declaration on Gender and Development.
Editors from private media houses have met to discuss political violence against journalists. The meeting held under the auspices of the media watchdog the National Media Institute of Southern Africa was convened to review the state of the media environment in the wake of the beating up of "The Nation" journalist, Daniel Nyirenda.
Namibia's oldest political party, the South West Africa National Union, has bemoaned what it says is a rise in censorship and sectarianism in the local media, particularly those controlled by the State. Launching its website in Windhoek, the party accused the media of practising "prostituted journalism", aimed at the ideological indoctrination of the Namibian masses.
With 10 months to go until elections, the author of this article says it is time to ask some important questions: Has Malawi really enjoyed progress as a democracy or have we stalled between real democracy and the freedoms that come from that, or authoritarianism with its limited political freedoms.? Has our politics become dysfunctional and irrelevant? Has our political polarised position encouraged a breeding ground for extremists and sycophants who are keen on creating violent conflict?
Air travelers are perhaps unduly worried about SARS, the severe acute respiratory syndrome. The world at large, however, stands petrified at the virulence of SAPS, the supremely arrogant patriotic syndrome. The climax of the recent upsurge of its U.S. genetic variant was too shocking and awful. The two syndromes have distinct pathogenic features. SARS affects the lungs. SAPS invades the brain tissue, perturbs neurotransmitter levels, and disrupts neural links. Relatively few have contracted SARS thus far. SAPS has engulfed virtually a whole nation. SARS can be rapidly lethal. Curiously, SAPS threatens the well being and lives of unfortunate outsiders who come under the intense gaze of the infected nation. The mode of transmission of SARS has not been precisely delineated. SAPS, however, is known to spread electronically, principally through the television screen. The education system and other social institutions also play a role in its propagation.
Journal of Peace building and Development, a new tri-annual refereed journal providing a forum for the sharing of critical thinking and constructive action on issues at the intersections of conflict, development, and peace, is calling for papers for its first issue. This volume IV will endeavour to capture and examine critical peace building and development topics and questions that challenge our era in the African context. Please click on the link for more information.
Fundraising from Europe is much more than just obtaining funds from the European Union. It also means fundraising from the 370+ million individuals, thousands of companies and trusts and foundations. This book will help you fund raise from the latter three sources. The European fundraising market turns over £200 billion each year. It includes some of the world’s largest foundations, headquarters of many of the world’s leading businesses and one-third of the wealth held by the world’s high net worth individuals. This book shows you how to successfully access these funds using case studies and providing facts and figures from the extensive and valuable European scene.
In 2001, Action Against Hunger celebrated its 22nd birthday with a growing awareness that the eradication of hunger requires much more than simply ensuring that global production of foodstuffs maintains pace with growing populations. In that year, AAH published The Geopolitics of Hunger, 2000-2001: Hunger and Power, an edited volume that presents an overview of contemporary food security issues. Indeed, the argument made by AAH is more complicated than supply and demand: control of food supplies is a tool wielded by authorities in power and those seeking to contest that power. Famine is more often a result of human action than environmental drought or disaster. The Geopolitics of Hunger describes the places and ways in which chronic malnutrition and the threat of starvation result from political manipulation of food supplies, despite international legal prohibitions against the use of food as weapon of war.
People who witness acts of terror and violence are often called after the event to bear witness to what they saw. In cases where this violence is inflicted by the state upon its own people, the process of bearing witness is both politically complex and traumatic for the individual involved. Fiona Ross's fascinating study of the process of bearing witness is the first book to examine the gendered dimensions of this topic from an anthropological and ethnographic viewpoint. Taking as a key example the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Ross explores women's relationships to testimony, particularly the extent to which women avoid talking about or are silent about certain forms of violence and suffering.
This study of Nkrumah provides a compelling account of one of the most significant politicians in post-colonial Africa. Hadjor argues that although Nkrumah's experiment failed, it continues to have relevance for Africa today. He also illustrates how certain mistakes were unavoidable during Nkrumah's time. He writes of the clarity of Nkrumah's vision, which helps throw light on the problems many Africans face today. In this important way, Hadjor's reworking of the essential themes of Nkrumah's presidency contributes to the debate on the political future of Africa and promises to give focus to the recent revival of interest in Nkrumah.
Visit for a display of work by Ugandan graphic artist Fred Mutebi, whose motivations are the African people and their environment, the colours and the splendour of Uganda (the pearl of Africa), and the rural people of Africa.
The generosity of computer magnate Bill Gates in giving money to African Aids victims isn't as simple as you might think, says this article. Gate’s demi-trillionaire status is based on a nasty little monopoly-protecting trade treaty called “TRIPS” – the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights rules of the World Trade Organisation. TRIPS gives Gates a hammerlock on computer operating systems worldwide, legally granting him the kind of monopoly the Robber Barons of yore could only dream of. But TRIPS, the rule which helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices.