Pambazuka News 477: Zimbabwe: Demystifying sanctions and strengthening solidarity
Pambazuka News 477: Zimbabwe: Demystifying sanctions and strengthening solidarity
UNHCR is shocked by the further loss of civilian lives we've seen from fighting in Mogadishu earlier this week. More than 30 people are reported killed, many of them civilians including children. From local sources we understand that medical facilities are having difficulties coping with the many wounded. Residents have described this week's shelling as among the worst in months.
Kenya's government should halt the proposed eviction of more than 50,000 people living alongside the country's railway lines until guidelines that conform with international human rights standards have been adopted, Amnesty International said on Thursday. On 21 March Kenya Railways published a notice giving residents 30 days to pull down their structures and leave, or risk prosecution. Most of those affected are slum dwellers in parts of Nairobi.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is launching a new livelihood programme designed to address the underlying causes of food shortages in Karamoja, the poorest and most marginalised region in Uganda which has not had a successful harvest in five years and where more than 80 per cent of the population lives in poverty.
The Malawi government will soon draft a law that will outlaw polygamy. Minister of Gender, Women and Children Development Patricia Kaliati said the move intends to help stop growing rates in HIV and AIDS cases.
Malawi and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has signed a formulation phase project document for managing climate change in the country to be implemented to a tune of $4.2 million
Nine people were killed, including a member of President Omar al-Beshir's National Congress Party, as violence broke out on Thursday that was unrelated to nationwide elections, according to the southern Sudan army. The country held its first national election in 24 years.
Rwanda and the World Bank on Friday signed two grants totalling $121.6 million to support the land-locked nation's budget as it recovers from the global downturn and aid reforms. Mimi Ladipo, the World Bank's country manager in Rwanda said $115.6 was earmarked to bolster the 2009/10 budget, a little higher than the previous fiscal year because it included almost $30 million to help mitigate the impact of the global downturn.
Asylum seekers are being thrown out of some countries because of a rise in xenophobia and political campaigns that use foreigners as scapegoats, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) chief said. Asylum and immigration are sensitive issues in many countries, such as Italy and Greece, which say they cannot cope with hundreds of thousands of people arriving as potential illegal migrants, often on rickety boats from Africa.
Activists have cautioned that the Gates Foundation funded study, released today in The Lancet and showing welcome progress on reducing maternal mortality globally, also reveals one catastrophic exception. They said that current global AIDS programmes were reminiscent of the Victorian era, casting pregnant women as potential vectors of disease, and ignoring their health in the single-minded rush to achieve a 2010 goal of preventing the transmission of HIV to their babies.
In Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is responding to the worst cholera outbreaks in the country for many years. Over the last five weeks the number of cholera cases has risen dramatically to more than 4,500, while more than 120 people have lost their lives. Despite hopes that the outbreak has reached its peak the previous week and that the number of cholera cases will start decreasing, heavy rains that continue to cause severe floods in the city could potentially worsen the situation in the coming weeks.
Each constituency in Kenya will by the end of the year boast of at least five digital centres complete with computers and Internet connectivity in a government plan to bridge the IT gap.
2010 is not shaping up to be a good year for satellite operators and resellers in Africa. There have been rumours that for the first time one operators’ sales in the continent have slipped down several percentage points. This year sees the arrival of four more international fibre cables: Glo One, Main One, EASSy and LION. Balancing Act’s latest report – African Fibre and Satellite Markets – takes the temperature of the current market and seeks to predict where things will be in three years time.
2010 is not shaping up to be a good year for satellite operators and resellers in Africa. There have been rumours that for the first time one operators’ sales in the continent have slipped down several percentage points. This year sees the arrival of four more international fibre cables: Glo One, Main One, EASSy and LION. Balancing Act’s latest report – African Fibre and Satellite Markets – takes the temperature of the current market and seeks to predict where things will be in three years time.
Libyans are criticising an April 4th government report that describes the country's health care as expansive and top-of-the-line. "Reports like this are created at a time of need to tell lies," Libyan rights activist Mohammed Sehim said.
Moroccan journalists, activists and university professors have launched a new organisation to defend free speech for the press and the public. The Freedom of Press and Speech Organisation will also work to influence the development of laws affecting the media, the group’s founders said at its inaugural press conference Saturday (April 10th) in Rabat.
Survival is appealing to sports giant Puma to disinvest from tourism company Wilderness Safaris over a lodge it has built on land belonging to the Bushmen of Botswana. Puma bought a 20% stake in the company via a private placement shortly before its listing on the Botswana and Johannesburg stock exchanges on 8th April.
"Estimates [for the period 1970-2008] show that over the 39-year period Africa lost an astonishing US$854 billion in cumulative capital flight--enough to not only wipe out the region's total external debt outstanding of around US$250 billion (at end-December, 2008) but potentially leave US$600 billion for poverty alleviation and economic growth. Instead, cumulative illicit flows from the continent increased from about US$57 billion in the decade of the 1970s to US$437 billion over the nine years 2000-2008." - report by Global Financial Integrity.
A gay rights activist in Kenya is receiving death threats and has been attacked on several occasions by random people who have seen and read about him in an anti-gay website that publishes and puts up posters of suspected homosexuals in different cities of Kenya, as ‘NOT WANTEDs’. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) revealed this week, as it denounced the website , stating that it is a violation of rights and that it victimises people, in the name of religion.
As the case of Millicent Gaika (30), a Cape Town lesbian who was beaten up and raped by a man known to her, is presently being heard at Wynberg Court, government has condemned the ongoing acts of “corrective rape” in the country and has vowed to put an end to them. After the man was arrested, the case was first heard at the Wynberg Court on Tuesday, 6 April but was postponed to today, Tuesday 13 April. Speaking outside the court where people are marching in support of Gaika, Ndumi Funda of Lulek’isisizwe LBT Women’s Project said, “We are strongly opposing bail for the perpetrator and we want to see justice being done for Gaika."
Funding for the first phase of an initiative to connect African research centres and link them to an existing European network has been approved by the European Commission. The approval follows a report that identified sufficient IT infrastructure in Africa to support the AfricaConnect Initiative, which aims to improve research collaborations and access to information.
A new piece of kit in the form of a backpack could help small farmers in Kenya increase yields, profits and agricultural know-how in a sustainable way. The backpacks, weighing 15-42 kg, contain things which help farmers bring a crop to harvest, including tools, a training manual and, in some versions, a collapsible water tank. They are designed for small plots of land and are currently being used in the Mau Forest region.
A so-called Vulture Funds bill - to stop finance companies using British courts to extort excessive debt repayments from some of the world's poorest countries - was passed in the frantic scramble to finish outstanding parliamentary business before Britain's general election in May.
The effects of climate change - such as drought, livestock deaths and resource conflict - may be all too apparent for the pastoralists of northern Kenya, but there is much to be done to explain the true causes. "We were warned about the current situation by our elders and spiritual leaders when I was very young. This was about 50 years ago when the Ngishili age groups were born,” Lemeteki Lerinagato, 70, told IRIN in the Samburu district.
A shadow has fallen over Zambia's long history of generously hosting refugees from troubled countries since 36 foreigners were deported to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but the government says it is only trying to ensure security and order in camps that still shelter some 57,000 people. "We are hoping that [deportations] will stop," said James Lynch, country representative for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Zambia. The organization communicated its alarm at the expulsions to the Zambian authorities on 13 April.
As Major Hamza Al-Mustapha – a former aide to Sani Abacha – continues to be held without trial in Nigeria, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde argues against his indefinite detention. No matter how dubious a person's reputation may be, Nigeria needs to move away from the anti-democratic legal practices that characterised its former military regime, Abidde concludes.
The 'Africa Development Indicators 2010' report, with its emphasis on the 'quiet corruption' of public sector workers supposedly not fulfilling their roles, is the latest attempt by the World Bank to wash its hands of its primary role in Africa's continuing impoverishment, writes Yash Tandon.
Efua Prah reviews Francis Nyamnjoh's 'Intimate Strangers', a book in which 'we learn and unlearn a lot about human beings and the solidarities they forge and deny one another'.
With the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) deciding in favour of Kenya's Endorois people, Korir Sing’Oei Abraham hails an unprecedented court victory. The Endorois were forcibly evicted by the Kenyan government in the period 1974–79, and their victory suggests positive ramifications for indigenous peoples' rights across Africa at large, Abraham argues.
his mouth is intrusive
invading my conscience
with words
his promises
i believe his tongue
dripping honey is a dagger
through my ears
sirens wailing
in my mind
are relief from
his public addresses
his idle chatter i believed
his voice is the
hyena’s laughter
animals in the night
whose wildness i cannot
hear when asleep in bed
dreaming
of a time before
his mind withered
and let his wide open mouth
spew hollow words
i believe mr president
nobody is tuned in
to your frequency
While many respected sources have raised serious concerns about the health of Ethiopian political prisoner Birtukan Midekssa, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi alarmingly continues to insist that her situation is one of 'perfect health', writes Alemayehu G. Mariam.
Fiercely critical of the US's role and continued presence in Haiti in the wake of the country's earthquake, Kali Akuno highlights the dangers of the supposedly neutral term 'humanitarian intervention' and calls for solidarity with the Haitian people in the face of the 'militarisation of the relief and reconstruction effort'.
Omar al-Bashir's vote at the Sudanese elections and the response of Kenya's immigration services to Al Shabab feature in Gado's cartoons this week.
With Zanzibar in the throes of political instability as its 2010 elections approach, Chambi Chachage calls for a 'win–win situation' and draws upon Mahmood Mamdani's emphasis on 'survivors' justice'.
The march against home demolitions and forced evictions 'Don’t Push Down My House' was scheduled to take place on Saturday April 10, in Benguela, Angola. In a letter to Omunga, the provincial governor of Benguela did not authorize the demonstration because 'the province of Benguela has not registered demolitions, forced land evictions and other acts that collide against the law'.
Our country is in crisis. The internal contradictions of the African National Congress have bought it to the point where it is no longer able to give leadership to society. It continues to speak the language of nationalism and national liberation but it has degenerated into an association of predatory elites hell bent on using the state to plunder the society. The gap between the ANC’s language and its practice is now so large that the organisation can no longer speak to the national interest with any conviction, clarity or credibility.
It is possible to address the negative effects of female circumcision without denigrating African women. African women who have undergone circumcision also deserve integrity and respect! Please this petition urging Good Vibrations to drop their support of Clitoraid. Clitoraid's humiliating campaign urges supporters adopt African women's clitorises.
ANC Youth League President Julius Malema’s racial pot-stirring coupled with the gruesome murder of white supremacist leader, Eugene Terre Blanche, has led to a rise in racial tensions in South Africa and lots of soul searching about the future of the 'Rainbow Nation'.
Sanusha Naidu writes about the China-Africa joint research and exchange program that was launched at the end of March by the follow-up committee of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), in partnership with the Institute of West Asian and African Studies (IWAAS) of the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS).
With concerns surrounding Sudan's ability to deliver free-and-fair elections and Omar al-Bashir's ruling National Congress Party (NCP) the only party pushing for an April vote, Sudan Democracy First Group argues that the US should respect the will of ordinary Sudanese instead of propping up the status quo.
As 36 imprisoned Saharawi activists continue a hunger strike from seven Moroccan jails, Konstantina Isidoros writes of the 'groundswell of international condemnation of Morocco's behaviour'. Protesting against Morocco's longstanding occupation of Western Sahara and the human rights abuses suffered by the indigenous Saharawi population, the hunger strikers' action represents the latest peaceful challenge to the Moroccan state's illegal claims on Western Sahara, stresses Isidoros, from individuals widely recognised as 'prisoners of conscience'.
In debates about Zimbabwe's political crisis and the role of the international community, it is difficult to sort out reality from rhetorical smoke and mirrors, write Briggs Bomba and William Minter. The current debate on ‘sanctions’ is a classic example: There is much strong language for and against, but rarely do debaters bother to say which measures are actually in place and what specific effects they have or should have.
The recent murder of Eugene Terreblanche, founder of the white supremacist Afrikaner Resistance Movement, should have focused the attention of the world on the exploitative, oppressive and de-humanising conditions of the landless peasants and farm workers in South Africa, writes Mphutlane wa Bofelo. But it’s easier for the country’s elites to blame racism alone for the incident than to acknowledge the historic links between race and class dynamics and to tackle the disparities that these have created, he concludes.
As a range of interest groups clamour for amendments to Kenya’s draft constitution on the basis of claims that it ‘legalises abortion’, Mary Wandia asks them to consider the ‘sobering facts on abortion, women’s rights and the status of women’. Voluntary abortion ‘happens irrespective of whether laws making it legal or illegal exist’, writes Wandia, and Kenya’s current legislation simply ‘makes safe abortion “illegal” and unsafe abortion “legal”, sentencing poor women and girls to unnecessary and preventable suffering and death.’
A discussion with the Afrikaner Resistance Movement’s Andrie Visagie on live national television has ‘brought into sharp focus a whole host of tensions, contradictions and implications of what it means to be a South African in 2010’, writes Liepollo Lebohang Pheko. Visagie’s outburst is a reminder, argues Pheko, that this ‘liberation of ours is hotly contested, differentially experienced and highly compromised; the majority are yet to fully move into an encompassing expression of this citizenship and liberation at all levels and spheres of life.’
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has damned a recent report by the US Department of State into the country’s human rights practices in 2009 as ‘Lies, lies and implausible lies’. Alemayehu G. Mariam imagines how Zenawi might respond to a sample of the findings included in the document.
Since the beginning of the year, the situation for the Kakuma News Reflector has become increasingly precarious, KANERE writes – a dangerous sign for refugees wishing to exercise their right to a free press and express their voices through the independent newsletter, which operates out of Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya. Here KANERE shares details of how the safety, protection and security of its journalists in the camp have been jeopardised.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s latest publication, ‘Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir’, is ‘a treasure-house of childhood memories’, writes Peter Wuteh Vakunta. ‘It is an informative and didactic memoir written with the intent of taking the reader down memory lane. The story of Ngugi’s travails through life, it lends credence to the wise saying that epic characters are often associated with humble beginnings.’
As racial tensions continue to rise over the murder of Eugene Terreblanche, Azad Essa writes a satirical piece on reports from the South African Muslim and Halaal Authority (SAMHA), that they have been inundated by calls from foreigners asking ‘if it was true that Terrorblanche was Muslim'.
‘There is no doubt that South Africa will become the next frontier for "land invasions"', writes Grasian Mkodzongi, ‘the situation in the country is a ticking time bomb. It’s almost impossible to think that a system of extreme injustice and poverty reflected across the country could be sustained forever.’
Mphutlane wa Bofelo’s article is a ‘weighty warning about leftist spin’ for those who, ‘in their naivety and idealism, tend to see compatriots in anyone who talks the talk’, writes Anne Price, in a letter addressed to the author.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this article was written by a man, writes Elma Doeleman.
History suggests that the World Bank’s management believes transparency is something that should apply to its clients and other external stakeholders rather than to itself, writes David Shaman. He invites readers to share their own experiences and observations at his new blog.
Morgan Tsvangirai’s contradictory statements on LGBTI rights, Madagascar’s elections and various interpretations of Africa by western visitors are among the topics featured in Sokari Ekine’s roundup of the blogosphere.
While the AU’s attempt is encouraging, it has shortcomings, and a case can be made that SSR requires a new approach and mechanism and should be supported in a much more strategic, patient and regional manner. Africa is the largest ‘market’ for SSR and SSR-related services. African ownership, however, remains limited. The AU should provide that.
Nuclear power holds promise for 10 African countries now in pursuit of building their own nuclear plants. Wind and solar solutions aren't reliable enough, planners say, nor do they offer adequate electricity.
An engagement ceremony has landed a same-sex Malawian couple in jail, propelled their country into international headlines, and pushed men who have sex with men (MSM) further towards society's risky margins. Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga were arrested and charged with sodomy and indecency after their public engagement in late December 2009.
Authorities in Somalia's self-declared autonomous region of Puntland have begun repatriating hundreds of Ethiopian migrants, officials have reported. "These are people who decided they wanted to return but could not afford to do so," said Mohamud Jama Muse, director of the Migration Response Centre (MRC) in Bosasso, Puntland's capital.
Time is everything in responding to a natural disaster. Mozambique's disaster management specialists are worried that they are missing key data on the small tremors that take place almost daily in the quake-prone country. Three of Mozambique’s five seismic detection stations are out of order, their seismographs damaged months ago by lightning and rains.
Pregnant mothers who are HIV-positive could soon find it challenging to access life-saving HIV drugs because Kenya was denied 270 million dollars in funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Global Fund cited the existence of two ministries of health and the jostling between them over control of funds as a major source of concern.`
Femmes Africa Solidarité has honoured the Mozambique's President, Armando Emilio Guebuza, with its African Gender Award, for his efforts in championing wider participation of women in his government. The award came on 4 April, just a few days before the southern African nation celebrates its national Women's Day on 7 April, which acknowledges efforts of women in the liberation struggle.
The NGO Branch of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs is pleased to announce an open call for oral and written statements for the 2010 ECOSOC High Level Segment (HLS) for NGOs in ECOSOC consultative status. The HLS will include sessions on the Annual Ministerial Review (AMR) and the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF).
Tens of millions of domestic workers world-wide, and hundreds of thousands in South Africa, suffer exploitation and abuse. Confined within an invisible and poorly regulated segment of the labour market, they are mainly unorganised and without knowledge of their legal rights. The Social Law Project at the University of the Western Cape is hosting a conference in Cape Town on 7-8 May 2010 under the banner "Exploited, undervalued - and essential" as part of an international initiative towards promoting more effective legal protection, decent work and empowerment in the domestic employment sector.
This latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the failure of the leaders elected in 2006 to radically change governance and to fulfil the democratic aspirations of their citizens. Nearly four years after Joseph Kabila won the presidency in elections hailed as a milestone in the peace process, power is being centralised at the presidential office, checks and balances barely exist, and civil liberties are regularly undermined, despite growing signs that the regime is unable to manage local conflicts.
The 2010 Gender Institute selected the theme of Gender and Sports in Africa’s Development: Towards Gender Equality in Sports in Africa. This builds on the debates on the same theme held during the 2009 edition of the Annual Gender Symposium held in Cairo in November 2009. The papers presented at this symposium revealed a marked gender disparity within the African sports space.
Pambazuka Press is planning to publish a Pan-African activists' diary for 2011. The diary will be a handbook of key information about Pan-African history, quotations from thinkers and activists (women and men) in Africa and the diaspora, pictures of critical events in our past, information about key events during 2011, and lots more.
EVENTS
If you would like us to include events – meetings, conferences, festivals, actions, courses, publications etc - that your organisation is planning to hold in 2011, please send details to panafdiary [at] pambazuka [dot] org.
QUOTATIONS
If you would like to suggest quotations for publication in the diary, please send them to panafdiary [at] pambazuka [dot]org. Make sure you include the source of each quote so that those who want to read more will know where to find it.
SUGGESTIONS
If you have suggestions about information you would like to see in the diary, please send them to panafdiary[at] pambazuka [dot] org.
Help make this diary the essential handbook for all activists in Africa and the diaspora. Make sure you get your recommendations in to us by 14 April 2010. Don’t be left out – let us know what events you are planning for 2011.
We can’t guarantee that we will include everything you suggest, but we’ll do our best!
The 2011 Pan-African Diary: the essential tool for freedom and justice!
Pambazuka News 476: Between patriarchy, pornography and pleasure
Pambazuka News 476: Between patriarchy, pornography and pleasure
Despite continuing tensions, Zimbabwe’s year long Inclusive Government has resulted in significant economic and political changes giving great relief to long suffering Zimbabweans. Considerable as these changes are, a lot remains to be done for Zimbabwe to fully transition to a peaceful and democratic order, particularly in terms of critical political reforms and national healing. In addition, to institutionalize irreversible political reforms, key questions must be addressed in relation to how Zimbabwe’s economy long ravaged by Structural Adjustment Programs and corruption, among other factors, can be reconstructed in the interest of ordinary people.
The conference theme, ‘Dare to Shape the Future’ emphasizes thinking outside the box and encourages participants to creatively imagine and help construct a different future for Zimbabwe, moving away from destructive polarization and conflict to justice, healing and reconciliation. And from repression, exploitation and poverty to freedom, equity and development. The conference will take place within the context of the yearlong existence of the Inclusive Government in Zimbabwe and will coincide with Zimbabwe’s 30th independence anniversary. In line with the theme of daring to shape the future – the conference will pioneer a culture of inclusive dialogue among a diverse range of stakeholders of different opinions and political stripes to help forge a new culture of tolerance. Speakers from Zimbabwe will help bring a better understanding of civil society struggles on the ground and how the solidarity community can help and will help shape people centered U.S. policies at a crucial time in Zimbabwe’s history.
For more information visit http://www.africaaction.org/conference-home.html or contact Africa Action at 202-546-7961 or [email][email protected]
A well known artist Owen Maseko and Voti Thebe, the person in charge of the Bulawayo National Arts Gallery, were arrested last Friday, a day after they launched an exhibition of provocative paintings about the Gukurahundi era.
For the first time, China led the United States and other G-20 members in 2009 clean energy investments and finance, according to data released by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Last year, China invested $34.6 billion in the clean energy economy – nearly double the United States’ total of $18.6 billion. Over the last five years, the United States also trailed five G-20 members (Turkey, Brazil, China, the United Kingdom, and Italy) in the rate of clean energy investment growth.
To throw out bogus refugee claimants, Canada has introduced a new bill that will usher in a new system within a year. Though Canada accepts about 260,000 new immigrants each year legally, thousands of people entering this country on tourist visas or fake papers stay back to apply for refugee status on grounds of persecution in their home countries.
Register now for “African Refugee and Immigrants: Challenges, Changes, Champions” – From May 3-5, 2010 in Arlington, VA. Ethiopian Community Development Council is hosting a conference on African Refugees and Immigrants. Please join federal and local government officials, NGO and CBO representatives, refugees and immigrants, academics, and other experts engaged in refugee and immigrant issues.
MRS Fellowships are offered by the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS) at the American University in Cairo through generous contributions from the Ford Foundation and the International Organization of Migration (IOM). The fellowships are intended to enable qualified Egyptian Students to enroll in any of the graduates programs of the Center for Migration and Refugees Studies.
Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (“ill-treatment”), in almost all cases, happen in secret. Access to lawyers, as well as to doctors, and contact with friends or family members creates a more open detention environment which helps to prevent torture and other ill-treatment. The right to be protected from torture and other ill-treatment is a fundamental one from which no derogation is permitted. This briefing note is intended to outline the current state of the law in relation to access to legal counsel promptly after deprivation of liberty as a safeguard against torture and other ill-treatment.
Civil society organisations are making public, worldwide, a communication by the Provincial Government of Benguela (Angola) that banned the demonstration that would take place in Benguela, last Thursday (March 25th), against the brutal demolitions and forced evictions that have become a regular occurrence in major cities and rural communities in Angola.
The International Health Partnership and related initiatives (IHP+)[1] has launched a Civil Society Health Policy Action Fund in 2010. This fund is open to support health organisations, networks and coalitions in 21 IHP countries over a one-year period. The countries are Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia.
Even as opposition parties threaten a last-minute boycott, Elections in Darfur and the Consequences of a Probable NCP Victory in Sudan , this latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines how the National Congress Party (NCP) has manipulated the 2008 census, drafted the election laws in its favour, gerrymandered electoral districts, co-opted traditional leaders and bought tribal loyalties. It has done this everywhere in Sudan, but most dramatically in Darfur, where it has greater freedom and means to carry out its strategy because of the ongoing conflict.
What was supposed to be a joyous day turned into a nightmare for one family, when on Monday morning 1 February, Maria Lungu* arrived at Lusaka International Airport after a two-month long business trip in Asia. Joy turned to shock and disbelief when Lungu was caught and arrested for drug trafficking upon arrival, just meters away from her anxiously waiting husband, children and other family members.
The soldiers who arrived in Makombo, a remote district in northern Congo on 14 December last year were practised at this sort of thing. Wearing Ugandan or Congolese army uniforms, they did everything at first to allay the suspicions of villagers, as they searched for areas where children would gather – markets, churches or water points. Once they had identified their prey, they tied them with rope or wire into human chains up to 15 people long, and forced them to carry off the goods they had looted.
The game of Niger Delta is an unfair one to which a whistle should have been blown long ago. Yet, the game continues in all unfairness and savagery; it has indeed become a first-come-first-swerve agendum. There’s no gainsaying that the whistle should be blown; but where is the whistle? And who is the Umpire Definitely not Saraba. By creating a collage of art forms behind an evocative front cover, we have neither changed the outlook of the Delta nor influenced it.
Despite continuing tensions, Zimbabwe’s year long Inclusive Government has resulted in significant economic and political changes giving great relief to long suffering Zimbabweans. Considerable as these changes are, a lot remains to be done for Zimbabwe to fully transition to a peaceful and democratic order, particularly in terms of critical political reforms and national healing. In addition, to institutionalize irreversible political reforms, key questions must be addressed in relation to how Zimbabwe’s economy long ravaged by Structural Adjustment Programs and corruption, among other factors, can be reconstructed in the interest of ordinary people.
The conference theme, ‘Dare to Shape the Future’ emphasizes thinking outside the box and encourages participants to creatively imagine and help construct a different future for Zimbabwe, moving away from destructive polarization and conflict to justice, healing and reconciliation. And from repression, exploitation and poverty to freedom, equity and development. The conference will take place within the context of the yearlong existence of the Inclusive Government in Zimbabwe and will coincide with Zimbabwe’s 30th independence anniversary. In line with the theme of daring to shape the future – the conference will pioneer a culture of inclusive dialogue among a diverse range of stakeholders of different opinions and political stripes to help forge a new culture of tolerance. Speakers from Zimbabwe will help bring a better understanding of civil society struggles on the ground and how the solidarity community can help and will help shape people centered U.S. policies at a crucial time in Zimbabwe’s history.
For more information visit http://www.africaaction.org/conference-home.html or contact Africa Action at 202-546-7961 or [email][email protected]
Informal traders’ hopes of making huge profits during the upcoming World Cup tourist influx were shattered last week when they were ordered to vacate Park Station, a key transit hub in Johannesburg’s central business district. Ironically, the incident occurred during South Africa’s Human Rights Day celebrations; the day South Africa remembers 69 victims from Sharpeville who died during the protest of pass laws.
Tanzania-based Consultant
Wellspring Advisors
Wellspring Advisors seeks a Tanzania?Based Consultant to provide critical support and oversight to its Tanzania grantmaking, which focuses on pro?poor economic development, children’s rights and development, women’s rights, and human rights. These wide?ranging portfolios cover such issues as women’s land and property rights, prevention of violence against women, reproductive rights, countering impunity, freedom of speech, disability rights, education, child protection, smallholder agriculture, and small and medium enterprise development.
Wellspring Advisors, LLC coordinates grantmaking programs that advance the realization of human rights and social and economic justice for all people. Wellspring is a private philanthropic consulting firm with offices in New York and Washington, DC. Our services include donor education and helping to shape a strategic vision; identification and presentation of appropriate funding opportunities; grants administration; and reporting.
Wellspring Advisors is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Wellspring Advisors seeks a Tanzania?Based Consultant to provide critical support and oversight to its Tanzania grantmaking, which focuses on pro?poor economic development, children’s rights and development, women’s rights, and human rights. These wide?ranging portfolios cover such issues as women’s land and property rights, prevention of violence against women, reproductive rights, countering impunity, freedom of speech, disability rights, education, child protection, smallholder agriculture, and small and medium enterprise development.
The consultant will report to Wellspring’s international program team. The initial time commitment associated with this consultancy will be part?time, approximately 4 to 8 days per month, for an initial period of three months. Wellspring Advisors will not sponsor any candidates to relocate to Tanzania and/or obtain any necessary legal documentation in Tanzania, such as visas or work permits. Similarly, Wellspring will not sponsor candidates to move to or work in the United States.
Responsibilities
As requested by the international program team, the consultant will:
• Conduct due diligence and site visits for current and prospective grantee organizations; monitor activities and use of funds by current grantees; evaluate grantee performance;
• Identify and suggest prospective grantees that might align with Wellspring’s clients’ programmatic priorities;
• Research and make recommendations about new issue areas of interest to Wellspring’s programs;
• Report findings and recommendations to Wellspring’s international program staff through regular written updates and conference call meetings;
• Provide Wellspring with updates on unfolding current events that may have an impact on its partners or program focus;
• Support grantees and applicants to ensure completion and submission of applications and reports;
• Engage and network with donors and NGOs working in relevant fields in Tanzania; attend relevant forums, meetings and conferences;
• Provide support in the planning and coordination of grant-related activities, including technical assistance provision, trainings and convenings;
• Support Wellspring staff in planning and executing site visits to local partners in Tanzania; and
• Perform related duties as requested and as needs evolve.
Qualifications
• 5+ years professional experience working in the fields of international development and/or human rights in Tanzania;
• University degree required; graduate degree preferred;
• Expertise in the areas of human rights, economic development, women’s rights, and/or children’s rights, ability to work across a range of programmatic issue areas highly desired;
• Excellent English oral and written communications skills required, knowledge of local languages a plus;
• Prior experience with grantmaking or grants management a plus;
• Strategic planning and other organizational development skills a plus;
• Excellent analytic abilities and impartiality;
• Initiative, resourcefulness, and flexibility—ability to work independently with minimal supervision;
• Demonstrated commitment to Wellspring’s grantmaking priorities;
• Ability to handle confidential client information with complete discretion; and
• Ability to work and travel within Tanzania.
How to apply
Send an email to [email][email protected] with “Tanzania Consultancy” in the subject line, to which you have attached the following three documents:
1. Cover letter highlighting relevant qualifications and salary history;
2. Current resume with three professional references; and
3. English writing sample (5-page maximum).
Héctor Cariño, Recruiter
Wellspring Advisors, LLC
1410 Broadway, 23rd Floor
New York, NY 10018-5007
Facsimile 212/ 609.2633
Applications must be received by May 1, 2010
Due to the high volume of applications received, Wellspring Advisors regrets that it is only able to respond to finalist candidates.
Fahamu’s is pleased to introduce the Fahamu Refugee E-Newsletter, a monthly publication thataims to provide a forum for providers of refugee legal aid.
With a focus on the major geographical areas in the global South (Asia, Africa, Latin America, and non-EU Europe), it aims to serve the needs of legal aid providers as well as raise awareness of refugee concerns among the wider readership of Pambazuka News.
The E-Newsletter will follow recent developments in the interpretation of refugee law; case law precedents from other constituencies; reports and helpful resources for refugee legal aid NGOs; and stories of struggle and success in refugee legal aid work. It welcomes contributions from legal aid
providers, refugees, and others interested or involved in refugee legal aid.
* Please send comments to
[email protected]ka.org or comment online
at Pambazuka News.
One year after the criminal attacks on Egyptian Baha’is in the village of Shuraniya in Sohag, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) expressed its disappointment at the Public Prosecutor’s failure to bring the assailants and those who incited the attacks to justice. For one full year, state authorities have yet to bring justice to the victims of the attacks or enable Baha’is forcibly removed from their homes to return
This week's review of African blogs includes a call to reexamine links between Africa and its diaspora, a lament about technology's negative impact on the Kenyan blogosphere, Ghana's first indigenous language blog and Kenya's very own superhero, Makmende.
Haiti’s earthquake has left women and children in the country highly vulnerable to rape and violence. Beverly Bell gives an account of this vulnerability and of the relentless work of KOFAVIV (Commission of Women Victim-to-Victim), a grassroots anti-violence group in Haiti, to prevent and protect women and children against rape and violence. Bell depicts the hostile environment that KOFAVIV is working in – one in which police and aid and relief groups are either less than willing to help or have limited resources. Furthermore, Bell points out that KOFAVIV members' advocacy has ‘come at a price’: Their daughters, their families and they are being personally targeted for their work.
Naked tracings worn thin of he
who walked miles in thousands of
shoes filled with sorrow,
shoe marks worn away
where he encamped
and where he alighted
on earth that tells the years passed
since the months of peace
gone, to months of what is now,
shoes that speak of dreams in the
West of when paradise was near;
to meet his lover of a far, he
left during the long nights that
desires to go where
the soul withdraws to its home,
to fly forgotten as a dream,
to cover the past with space
he sails on a small boat
in a sea so immense
that transports
dreams after dreams.
Night putting its shadow aside
for soles of the feet to cross
the river to Zion,
the boat awaits to take its guest
to a place of dreams of love, inside
left all; deserting a conduit and heaps
to travel with 7 oceans and
hundreds of millions of stars
swinging; to walk with a million suns
that light up the day
of whole rivers of light,
to swim, in seas of love waves
that shields pain,
to make blankets of dark sand;
sandcastles that shield,
to receive quiet nights
and mornings
that call songs of birds
that sings for souls of dreams,
and he, infix’t
to be one with dreams he becomes
one with everything around,
laughing only to the sky.
Unbending on dreams
he, dwells amid the stocks
of ruins of stone-walls
heading where the imagination
broke in, his entire sky
taken up by
a journey full of unawareness,
continuing; alighted by the affection
of Zion,
he remains a prisoner of his dream
captive to a world beyond knowing.
In the wide-of-eyes
on an open terrain he journeyed
for the love of Zion,
strung out along the route
chased, shadows of hope closing in
crying to his fears,
speaking with the deaf;
the unexpressed rocks,
befriending sands
that speaks of time.
Time that brings out his eclipse
of a spirit of unsullied lucid dreams
of mysteries of Zion,
in silence to join its silent secret place,
he sifts through the current of air
swamped by rains of a night traveler
flowing dark and under, he
enwrapped in every kind of cloud
passing the night
to join the cleared morning
of pearls of the great sky,
to witness nights of dark and under.
Unbroken, he continued
to brake past bonds
to make new ones
on the eastern slopes
to join with Zion,
and even in far holding on
to not brake the bonds of desire
he, pushed by the north winds
to what is the southern tip
of the north Afrik to that
of the northern terrain
of the Bilad as Sudan,
crossing to trade life for what
seemed not death
beyond flutes
of Sudanese tunes,
escaped eternal rest to bathe
in the Nile
to wash blood with sparks of gold,
black dust of the body
walked a mile in cracked
earth to find the feet reluctantly
stuck in cracks of xylophonic tunes of life.
A spirit of unsullied lucid dreams,
mysteries of Zion he meets,
one moment his life a stone
the next
a meet'ng of the land of his lovers;
to be embraced by ashes, cold winds
and blackened hearts of stones
of Zion,
oh closeness to life, hardness of life
to what is now
that grief’d him through journeys,
to at last, to have met his land of lovers
but to be met with phantoms
that creep around
that sting and bring droplets;
each drop for the lost dreams
of Zion;
deceived dreams that makes the heart
brew trouble and anguish,
the departure of paradise
the loss of a longed lover,
his Zion,
aching his heart of a dream
once promised and now lost,
of a friend she may have been
but even she could not keep
her promise to him,
for a well-meant word
could not be taken by she,
a friend he once called;
his heart weeps with no end
for the one he knows
and only loves,
others of a life to come;
more to come
to meet and to attest and
to have to turn their backs, and he,
the aloneness of the deluded soul
broken'n
fades into the distance
kept in the shadows of Zion.
Following the African Commission's ruling in favour of Endorois claims on ancestral land lost during the Kenyatta regime, L. Muthoni Wanyeki argues that this success represents an important precedent and 'lays the ground for the slow process of renegotiating our very country'.
Reflecting on the background to Ethiopia's 1984 famine and the global media's portrayal of an 'icon of misery', Vijay Prashad revisits the broader geopolitical context behind the country's repeated bouts of food insecurity during the period. If Haiti, as a contemporary equivalent, is to be able to offer prosperity to its people, then the current momentum behind raising aid needs to be harnessed to cancel the country's iniquitous debt, Prashad stresses, as part of a broader global transformation of economic relations envisaged under initiatives such as the 1973 United Nations new international economic order (NIEO).
In this week's roundup of emerging actors news, Africa set to grow by 4.8 percent, Indian and Chinese investors identified as the worst violators of environmental regulation, South Africa eyes Uganda’s oilfields, and China and South Africa pledge to upgrade strategic partnership.
Gado's latest cartoon considers the practicalities of putting the Pope on trial.
Royal Dutch Shell is holding back the tears no more. Shell apologises to all inhabitants of Nigeria’s Niger Delta for the many years of human rights violations, for which Shell takes full responsibility. Confronted with massive evidence of human rights violations that can only be attributed to its operations in the Niger Delta, Royal Dutch Shell is extremely proud to be the first international petrochemical company to publicly say: We are sorry.
A pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has authorised the opening of formal investigations into the post-election violence in Kenya; the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project (EHAHRDP) is however concerned that the ICC has not yet implemented measures necessary to ensure the protection of human rights defenders (HRDs) involved in the forthcoming investigation. In a policy brief sent to the ICC Registrar today EHAHRDP therefore called on Court to put in place a protection strategy for HRDs, as key intermediaries, immediately.
With an increasing number of civil society organizations seeking consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, the NGO Branch of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), is increasingly being called upon to engage with these organizations worldwide on a wide range of issues on the United Nation’s development agenda. There is now a growing demand from organizations from both the developed and developing countries to contribute to the UN’s economic and social agenda, including to the internationally agreed development goals. In order to facilitate this engagement and provide a suitable platform for civil society, UNDESA has launched a knowledge-based, open networking platform called CSO Net - the Civil Society Network
This manual is designed to help NGOs in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) who may be interested in the field of Human Rights but feel that they do not know enough about it or where to start. Sections include:
Understanding the Problem
The Skills a Human Rights NGO needs
Building Cultures that favour Human Rights
Interventions
Working in Co-operation
Helping the Damaged
Further information (web links)
Countries seeking food security and will allow investors to export all of their produce, the head of a private Nigerian agriculture consultancy firm said on Monday. Gulf Arab countries reliant on food imports have intensified efforts over the last year to buy land in developing nations ranging from Pakistan to the Sudan and Ethiopia.
Pambazuka News 478: Obama and AFRICOM: Militarisation intensifies
Pambazuka News 478: Obama and AFRICOM: Militarisation intensifies
Within the framework of the 50th anniversary of African independence, the Social and Human Sciences Sector of UNESCO (SHS) is launching a “Call for Ideas” for prospective proposals in favour of Africa’s development within the next decade.