Pambazuka News 231: Smile, Woman of Africa, Smile!
Pambazuka News 231: Smile, Woman of Africa, Smile!
“Massive" educational deprivation continues to plague sub-Saharan Africa, South African Minister of Education Naledi Pandor said, as reported by the Mail and Guardian. "Despite country reports of progress, it is clear that an extraordinary effort will be required to ensure that all countries are directly assisted to succeed," she told the 15th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Edinburgh, Scotland. In South Africa, as in most of Africa, boys are pressured into dropping out of school to earn money for their families, while pregnancy is the main reason girls leave school.
Close to 200 supporters of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood were arrested before the start of the second phase of polling in Egypt's parliamentary elections opened on Sunday (November 20), security sources said. According to the Mail and Guardian, around 100 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were detained in the Fayyum governorate about 100km south of Cairo, the sources said.
Gender equality is "taking root" in African leadership, Pan African Parliament (PAP) president Gertrude Mongella said in Midrand on Monday (November 21). Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's election as President of Liberia shows "the equality of women and men in organs of power is taking root on this continent", Mongella said on the first day of the PAP's fourth ordinary session.
The HIV and AIDS Youth Worker will work alongside GAVO, a local NGO in Berbera, Somaliland, to assist in devising and developing an appropriate response to HIV and AIDS for youth.
The long awaited English translation of Théophile Obenga's AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: The Pharaonic Period: 2780-330 BC is finally easily available in the United States by placing your orders with Vitabu Vya Africa Books, POB 2847, Berkeley, CA 94702., or calling 510-848-9485 At a list price of $32.50 (plus state tax --California's residents-- shipping and handling), the 671 pages volume is a bargain as the back cover presentation makes clear: "Was ancient Egypt African? A century ago, the answer from scholars with little knowledge of hieroglyphs and less of Africa was dismissive, racist: no. Today, a major intellectual shift is under way. New African scholarship, grounded in accurate multidisciplinary research and first-hand expertise in ancient Egyptian, contemporary African languages, Greek and Latin, has unearthed oral and written data clarifying Africa's history, philosophy, literature and culture from the upheavals of today all the way back to the beginnings of human society in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, East Africa, Ethiopia, Nubia and Egypt."
Christian Aid is launching its gifts catalogue www.presentaid.org with a spoof Christmas single Feeling Flush this Christmas? on 17 November 2005 to help tackle sanitation problems such as 'flying toilets' which affect many people in third world slums. The single is a remix of the Christmas carol We Three Kings of Orient Are. No musical instruments are used. Instead the carol is composed of unusual sounds associated with gifts from the Present Aid catalogue. The 'musicians' include a mosquito choir, a chorus of cows, sheep, and goats as well as toilet flushes. The term 'flying toilets' might sound funny but it's deadly serious. In some African slums, such as Kibera, in Nairobi, up to 15,000 people could be sharing a single block of six toilets. Without running water people are forced to use plastic bags to defecate in. They then throw the bags into the street - and hence are known as 'flying toilets'.
Listen to the single by clicking on: http://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/presentaidmusic/3kingzzz%20.mp3
The ghosts of Rwanda are stirring ever more ominously in Darfur, writes Sudan watcher and commentator Eric Reeves. "Differences in geography, history, and genocidal means do less and less to obscure the ghastly similarities between international failure in 1994 and the world's current willingness to allow ethnically-targeted human destruction to proceed essentially unchecked," he writes.
Eritrea's president has accused Ethiopia of raising the spectre of renewed conflict between the two neighbours over their disputed border as a ploy to distract attention from Ethiopia's domestic troubles. Military manoeuvres on both sides of an unmarked 1,000 km (620 mile) frontier between the feuding Horn of Africa neighbours have raised international concern about a possible repeat of their 1998-2000 border war that killed 70,000 people.
An Ethiopian court denied bail on Monday to 23 opponents of the government accused of inciting violence in Addis Ababa in early November. At least 42 people were shot dead when police confronted demonstrators in the capital after the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) called for new protests against May polls it says the government manipulated. Four more people were killed in clashes elsewhere in subsequent days. The government denies ballot fraud.
The Cairo office of the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, closed indefinitely on Sunday, bringing its operations relating to asylum applicants to a halt following a mass sit-in by Sudanese asylum seekers and refugees. Some 3,000 Sudanese, who have now been camped a mere 200 metres away from UNHCR premises for two months, also declared a hunger strike.
African Union (AU) and United States mediators are trying to reconcile the divided leadership of the largest rebel group in Darfur ahead of the resumption of the peace talks later this week, an AU official said. The leaders of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) are under pressure to resolve their internal differences and present a united front at the next session of the delayed peace negotiations in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, which had been scheduled to start on 21 November.
I have just finished reading your comprehensive editorial on events unfolding in Tunis and send my sympathy to journalists in general and human rights activists in particular.
I think the UN must not sit down unconcerned for that country's authorities to treat communicators as common criminals. What is the purpose of the Summit in the first place? What a shame!
I am trying to publicise as widely as possible what is happening now in Ethiopia - but without jeopardizing the possibilities for getting a visa to go back asap. So please do not mention my name if you decide to publicise the following.
I was in Addis working with ILO last week during the strike. Reports were very varied and contradictory, but what seems to have happened is:
1) the opposition had called for a one week strike immediately following Eid to enable Muslims also to join the protest against Meles’ rigging of the elections.
2) something sparked resistance early. This led to at least 50 people shot dead at random by the military – they do not speak the same language and have also been trained to be extra aggressive. The deaths included children and women trying to prevent their sons being taken away. Most of the resistance from the people was just in the form of roadblocks and stones. At least one person was shot dead just in front of a factory I was visiting.
3) 3,000 at least have now been detained and shipped to detention camps in the desert including all opposition leaders, human rights activists and journalists.
4) Government is also blocking any forms of communication it can eg the independent Amharic station.
I do hope you can make these facts widely known so the repression can stop and the detainees released – and also use any networks you have to update/correct any of the above information. Unfortunately all my contacts are too scared to speak at this time.
It seems the only way of getting world attention is to blow up a few tourists or set a few cars alight in the streets of Paris. BBC and CNN seemed more interested in Charles and Camilla's visit to US.
This 66-page report documents how refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa’s largest city often encounter abuse by police and other obstacles throughout the refugee-status determination process. “On paper, South Africa has exemplary laws to protect refugees and asylum seekers,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch. “But in practice, the government is failing to provide protection to these vulnerable individuals.” South Africa hosts approximately 142,000 refugees and asylum seekers. Many of them have fled conflict areas and persecution in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe.
Professor Mesfin Woldemariam 75, former chair of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), has lately started a hunger strike, calling upon all people touched by the on-going human rights violations to join him until justice prevails in the plight of the Human Rights Defenders under threat in Ethiopia. EHRCO is a co-founder of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Network (EHAHRDN).
Pambazuka News 230: Repression in Tunis at World Summmit on the Information Society
Pambazuka News 230: Repression in Tunis at World Summmit on the Information Society
Windows, bridges and cafes. That’s how blogs were described in a panel discussion at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis on Thursday. The discussion, entitled “Expression under Repression”, was organized by Dutch non-governmental organisation Hivos and Global Voices, a non-profit global citizens’ media project. Blogs, which are a form of citizen’s publishing that makes it easy for people with internet access to run their own website, were windows because they shone a light not only on the inside of a country but also gave a view of the outside world. They were bridges because they created social islands in divided countries, for the first time giving a voice to marginalized communities such as women. They were cafes because they created a space away from the monopoly of the government where important debates could take place that might have long-term political effects.
This was how Iranian blogger and event panelist Hoosein Derackshan saw the effects of blogging on his country, where about 10 percent of the population have internet access and where there are an estimated 700 000 blogs. Blogs had become a phenomenon in the country, he said, presenting a threat to the government who were afraid of the organizing potential of the internet and its possible disruption to the social and political order.
In the lead up to the event, it was unclear whether or not it would go ahead. The Tunisian authorities had indicated that they were unhappy with any events that dealt with the subject of freedom of expression or human rights and had marked out five events due to be held at the official exhibition centre – the Kram exhibition centre outside Tunis – that they felt did not keep strictly with the theme of information and communications for development. High-level diplomatic interventions meant that the event was eventually able to go ahead, but throughout the period in which it was held there was wrangling in the corridors outside between Tunisian authority representatives and event organizers. At one stage during the meeting instructions were given to those attending that they were not allowed to hand out material to those assembled. The WSIS has been marred by the Tunisian authorities barring an alternative civil society meeting, by attacks on journalists and by the disruption of meetings.
Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices, said a powerful shift was taking place in terms of global citizens media, which had the potential to democratize the media. In the past there had been no way to access and understand what people in other countries were saying, but as a result of the internet and the development of blogging, people were able to share their voices with the rest of the world.
While some people had questioned how relevant the internet was to the improvement of economic and social well being, it was critical because without individual empowerment development was not sustainable. Censorship was therefore very much connected with impeding development.
The issue of increased attempts by governments to control the internet came under the spotlight in a presentation by Nart Villeneuve, director of technical research at the Citizen’s Lab. Villeneuve has been studying filtering of the internet for the last three years. He described how states were beginning to create borders in cyber space through placing controls on the points of centralization on the internet infrastructure. Filtering was described as a specific technique used to implement controls and was in most cases about content. It could be implemented in various ways, from software on personal machines or through specialized technology at Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or upstream at international connection points.
Most of the technology used for filtering was imported from the US, as was the case in Tunisia, where a US company had supplied the technology for blocking websites.
For the most part, governments were not transparent or accountable in their filtering activities. Some denied that it happened at all or obscured the fact that filtering was in place. Most were unable to answer what the blocking criteria was, or if there was a review or grievance process.
For the most part, filtering began as attempts to control content such as pornography, but an interesting trend, said Villeneuve, was that once filtering began it tended to migrate into other areas, with filtering seen as a quick fix to a larger social or political problem.
One of the worrying trends was that countries relied on commercial products for filtering, meaning that control over what was filtered therefore got ceded to the company developing the technology. There was also a large amount of “collateral damage” involved in filtering in that blocking one website could often lead to the blocking of thousands of others.
Filtering was in effect one mechanism and was linked with repressive controls and laws that caused people to self-censor. Reverse filtering was another problem, whereby filtering took place on the basis of geographic location. For example, because of the US embargo on Iran, websites were blocked for US web surfers.
Villeneuve said in some countries a “national interest” model was being pursued, with countries creating what were effectively intranets that could be accessed from within the country at lower cost than the international network. This meant that the local content would only be approved content and only wealthier internet users would be able to access the mainstream internet.
“What we are seeing is that non-transparent filtering is starting to turn into forms of political censorship and this has an impact on the internet and on democratic participation in a country. What filtering does is to isolate nodes of a network and cut them off – isolating them so that they can be more easily repressed. This is the opposite of what the internet is meant to be,” Villeneuve said.
Taurai Maduna, information officer for www.kubatana, a forum for civil society voices in Zimbabwe, also spoke as a panelist at the event. He said freedom of expression in Zimbabwe had been eroded through a variety of factors including repressive legislation such as the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). Adopted in 2002, POSA had been used by the government to make it difficult to hold public meetings. AIPPA had contributed to curtailing people’s freedom of expression. Zimbabwe media had been shrinking over the years.
He said the internet remained one of the few uncensored methods of communication and information dissemination and described the use of the internet to distribute information relevant to the civil society sector in Zimbabwe, the powerful use of email in civil society campaigns and Kubatana’s involvement in the training of organisations in the use of email and the internet in their activities. “You find that most civil society organisations, when a human rights violation happens, don’t know how to disseminate the information. Using email they can get the word out.” “What Kubatana does is to focus on local content – there is a lot of content out there but not a lot that focuses on Zimbabwe. We are helping Zimbabwean organisations to come together.”
* Please send comments to [email protected]
Twenty-one members of a new commission began its work on Tuesday (November 15) to identify all Burundi political prisoners being held throughout the country. The commission will "determine who are political prisoners and provide a complete list", the nation's first vice-president, Martin Nduwimana, said during the commission's launch. The commissioners, who are mostly magistrates and lawyers, are to work in four subcommissions to cover the four provinces of Bujumbura, Ngozi, Bururi and Gitega regions, which each host the nation's main prisons.
Source: Alertnet
Based on the 2004 e-Access & Usage Household survey that was completed during the course of 2004 and 2005, this report is the result of a demand study of individuals and households and how ICT's are used across 10 African countries. This ground-breaking research is now available.
Source: Research ICT Africa
Weak government controls are failing to stop diamonds from fuelling conflict, according to a new report by Global Witness. The report, Making it Work: Why the Kimberley Process Must Do More to Stop Conflict Diamonds, targets the annual meeting of the Kimberley Process Plenary starting today (Nov. 15) in Moscow. The report shows how diamonds from Cote d’Ivoire are being mined in rebel-held areas and are then smuggled through neighbouring countries to international markets; Liberian diamonds, although subject to UN sanctions, are being certified by the Kimberley Process and exported from neighbouring countries; weak regulation of diamond cutting and polishing factories leaves centres vulnerable to the trade in conflict diamonds.
Forum for Democratic Change President Kizza Besigye was yesterday committed to the High Court for trial on charges of treason and rape. He is to appear in the High Court. Buganda Road Court turned down his lawyers' application for special treatment, including food. The Magistrate, Ms Margaret Tibulya, argued that her court didn't have the powers to grant the defence's application. He advised Besigye's team to get in touch with Luzira Prison's authority.
The Ministry of Communication Science and Technology is making progress in the improvement of telecommunications in Botswana, Itumeleng Batsalelwang, the ministrys chief communication officer, has said. Batsalelwang told BOPA that the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation has embarked on two fibre projects: the West Africa Fibre System and East Africa Submarine Cable System. He said the East Africa Submarine Cable System project was advanced in that Botswana has signed a memorandum of understanding with the consortium and the current issue was drafting of the construction and maintenance agreement.
Two reports were released recently that chart the rapid changes taking place in African ICT markets over the last year. The first looks at the rise of broadband access which has become increasingly available in Africa for the first time ever. The second report analyses the mobile handset market in one of the continent's largest markets, Nigeria and provides some useful pointers as to how that market will develop. Between 2001 when the first broadband access was rolled out and the present day, a wide range of both wireline and wireless broadband technologies have been deployed across Africa.
The passive acceptance of others’ peculiarities is not enough, stresses Kofi Annan. Diversity has forever characterized the human condition. Yet, mankind’s acceptance of it has been painfully lacking. This intolerance of the “other” remains a source of great and everyday
human suffering. If we hope to achieve peace in our young century, we must start respecting each other today -- as individuals who each have the right to define our own identity, and belong to the faith or culture of our choice; as individuals who know that we can cherish what we are, without hating what we are not.
En marge du 23ème Sommet Afrique France des Chefs d’Etat et de gouvernements prévules 3 et 4 décembre 2005
Organisé par : Coalition des Alternatives Africaines Dette et Développement (CAD- Mali)
Où : à Bamako
Quand : du 30 novembre au 4 décembre 2005
Partenaires associés:
Coté Africain : la RADDHO – Sénégal, le FNDP de la Côte d’Ivoire, le Mouvement Burkinabé des Droits de l’Hommes et des Peuples, la Ligue Tchadienne des Droits de l’Homme, la Ligue Togolaise des Droits de l’Homme, l’UIDH, RODADHD-Niger, FLAM-Mauritanie, Réseau Ouest Africain d’Alternatives au Développement (ROAD)
Coté français : l’Association Survie, Agir Ici, ATTAC (Groupe Afrique), CRID, CEDETIM-IPAM, Secours Catholique, CCFD, Peuples Solidaires, Fédération des Congolais de la diaspora, Terre des Hommes France
Tous ensemble pour exiger une autre coopération France Afrique privilégiant les aspirations citoyennes!
Two African leaders launched a public appeal Wednesday (November 16) for support to a global fund for community-based communication projects. President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria launched the appeal for increased funding for the Global Digital Solidarity Fund (GDSF). Few, however, attended the meeting they addressed. Obasanjo nevertheless made an earnest appeal for more. The fund "relies heavily on contributions by stakeholders," he said. "Contributions, no matter how small, will help."
This article examines the anti-corruption initiatives of the African Union (AU) and New Partnership for Africa_s Development (NEPAD) and analyses their effectiveness. It also explores the phenomenon of corruption in Africa more generally and follows with some recommendations on how to tackle it. The author concludes that the best role the AU and NEPAD can play to combat and prevent corruption in Africa is by complementing and strengthening grassroots and national measures and by promoting regional anti-corruption norms.
The program, now in its first year, is based at the ICTE headquarters in New York City. We will review applications in February 2006 and issue invitations to two researchers by the end of March for the following academic year (September, 2006 through May, 2007). The focus is on scholars doing tolerance-linked interdisciplinary work in either early childhood education or in women's human rights. We recognize the breadth of the description, but we are eager to cast a wide net in the early years of the initiative as we gain experience and visibility in the academic community. We are advised in this effort by a small selection committee of academic colleagues.
The Ginetta Sagan Fund of AIUSA is now accepting nominations for its 2006 Annual Award for the Human Rights of Women and Children. Here is your opportunity to honor women who have made a difference in the lives of women and/or children. Previous winners include women originally from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, Turkey, Somalia, and Uganda. The 2006 Award will be given to a woman who works on behalf of the human rights of women who meets the following criteria: * Demonstrates courage, integrity and commitment to human rights principles, and * Resides in, or is indigenous to, the crisis region.
The Tunisian government could be able to monitor the activities and movements of each of the thousands of delegates to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). That’s because the credit card-like registration badges that every delegate is issued with when registering for the summit contain a chip that has to be swiped when entering the summit facility - the Kram exhibition centre outside Tunis. Theoretically, this could enable the Tunisian authorities to store and access information about each delegate, but also to know which area of the summit venue each delegate is in and who else is in the same area.
The same system was used in Geneva and caused an uproar. “We don’t actually know, but I don’t think it tells anyone that I’m actually sitting in this room. There is less control,” said an internet policy expert, when questioned about the issue at a press conference.
Whether the Tunisian government is or isn’t using the technology to track the movements of delegates, its impossible not to feel watched in Tunis. High security at any major international summit has become the norm and Tunis is no exception.
Police gather on seemingly every street corner, while “men in suits” are everywhere, lining the highways and patrolling the corridors of the summit. At parallel civil society events that have addressed the issue of the human rights situation in Tunisia, security has been noticeably in attendance. When I tried to enter the venue for an event on Tuesday I was blocked by two security officials who told me that the venue was full. When I eventually got inside after one of the organizers intervened, there were plenty of seats available.
The entire area around the summit centre has been cleared of vegetation and roadblocks are common in the roads leading to the summit. Delegates are bussed into the exhibition centre from hotels and only authorized busses are allowed near the centre. Without an official badge or other forms of official authorization, it is impossible to enter the summit area.
In this context, its hard not to feel watched, and its hard not to feel that the summit is really a domain of the “haves” who have to be protected from the “have-nots”.
Since the earliest of times, Tunis has been an area of struggle, invaded by first the Phoenicians and later taken over by the Romans, who were in turn forced out by maurauding barbarian hordes that swept through Europe in the 5th century and were followed by Arab and Turkish empires.
Later, when the Allies under General Eisenhower landed in North Africa in November 1942, the Germans and Italians seized Tunis as an operations base for the forces of Rommel. The area was the scene of fierce fighting between the Germans and the Allies, until the Allied forces triumphed in 1943. Following the war, the struggle for independence from the French gained ground, leading to bloody clashes and the eventual declaration of a republic in 1957 with Habib Bourguiba as first president.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ousted Bourguiba in a bloodless coup on 7 November 1987, promising to lead the country toward democracy and releasing political prisoners. But after January 1992, President Ben Ali started using the civil war in neighbouring Algeria as an excuse to stifle basic rights, mainly freedom of expression, says the Tunisian Monitoring Group, a body of freedom of expression organisations set up to monitor the human rights situation in Tunisia in the lead up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Opposition and independent papers were closed down and journalists and hundreds of political activists, most of them Islamists, were imprisoned following unfair trials, particularly in the early 1990s, says a TMG report.
Later, the Tunisian government used the attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001, to further restrict freedom of association, movement, and expression. A new law criminalizing freedom of expression was passed at the end of 2003 allegedly to support “the international efforts in matters of the fight against terrorism and money laundering.” As reported by TMG, The Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) said after the promulgation of this law, “the year 2003 has been marked by the promulgation of laws of an unprecedented serious character in terms of their violation of the right to information.”
http://www.andycarvin.com/
http://www.wsis-wire.net/content/view/1171/
http://www.mraihi.com/blog
http://www.mraihi.com/blog
http://panos.blogs.com/iwitness
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=wsis&btnG=Google+Search
www.panos.org.uk/iwitness/
http://www.dailysummit.net/
http://www.highwayafrica.ru.ac.za/hana/
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/mena1105/
The Tunisian authorities prevented foreign and Tunisian associations, including Front Line, from holding a meeting to organize a “Citizens Summit” in parallel with the UN World Summit on Information Technology (WSIS) in Tunis on Monday 14th November. Front Line, together with other NGOs, cancelled planned parallel events in the main conference centre which should have been held on Tuesday 15th November as a protest against the activities of the Tunisian authorities and the ongoing harassment of Tunisian human rights defenders. Over fifty policemen, who refused to identify themselves, prevented NGO members from entering the German Cultural Centre in Tunis. They shoved the participants and pushed one to the ground. The Citizen’s Summit on Information Society official website has also been blocked in Tunisia and is only accessible from The WSIS Media Centre.
Andrew Anderson, Deputy Director of Front Line, one of the participants said: "It is outrageous that the Tunisian authorities are using these bullying tactics at a world summit. They are showing a visible contempt for freedom of association and assembly."
This week's Pambazuka is brought to you directly from Tunis, the city hosting this year's World Summit on the Information Society. This summit is about making access to the internet universal, it is about the fine sentiments of democracy, accountability and good governance in relation to the internet. Yet it has been the venue for severe and systematic repression of civil society voices, the use of bureaucratic meddling to prevent democratic discussion and, ironically, making access to the internet a logistical nightmare. For this reason, this week's Pambazuka News is shorter than usual (we can hear sighs of relief from some, and groans of disappointment from others). Normal service will be resumed next week.
EDITORIAL: Patrick Burnett reports from Tunis on WSIS and the attempts by the authorities to block plans to hold an alternative civil society forum.
COMMENT & ANALYSIS:
- IFEX launch protest against repression
- The internet is not as accessible as people think
- How 'big brother' can watch what you're doing
- A brief history of Tunisia
and links to news sites
BLOGGING AFRICA: Sokari Ekine focuses on what bloggers have to say at WSIS
PAN AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen returns with commentary on political unrest has been widespread in Ethiopia since May elections and calls for calm on both sides.
BOOKS & ARTS:
Book Review: The Trial and Other Stories by Ifeoma Okoye
Poem: The Charade is Over - Requiem for the Ogoni 9, by Rotimi Sankore
GCAP: More than 40 representatives of youth, women’s networks, national coalitions, faith-based organizations organized in Africa gathered in Harare last week.
CONFLICTS & EMERGENCIES: New report claims AU troops in Darfur have made a difference
WOMEN & GENDER: Pambazuka News continues its analysis of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, focusing this week on land rights
ELECTIONS & GOVERNANCE: Women contenders for parliament in Egypt demand greater representation
DEVELOPMENT: Water privatisation critised by report
HIV/AIDS: South Africans to test candidate Aids vaccine
and much more ...
STOP PRESS
WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: REGISTRATION POSTPONED TO NOV 30
Registration of self organized activities for the polycentric WSF 2006 – which will take place in Bamako (Mali), Caracas (Venezuela) and Karachi (Pakistan), in January, 2006 – were postponed until November 30th. Attention: there will be no further postponement! Over 3,400 organizations have already registered at the activities registration website. By the morning of November 16th, a total amount of 2,100 activities were registered for the three events.
Registration at the African venue in Bamako, Mali, have been slow. Pambazuka News urges African civil society organisations and activists to make sure that the Mali event represents the full range of African voices. Register Now! Contact esp[email protected] Bamako (Mali) or visit http://www.wsf2006.org/
Part 1 [Nov 1995]
The charade is over
The masquerades
are on parade
Ribbons on heavy chests
One for every life
they have taken
The charade
- Is over
The Ogoni 9
were hung today
Injustice has triumphed
[But only for a day]
On the night of long knives
And wicked jibes
-starched uniforms and corporate suits gloated
as the bodies lay bloated
WHERE?
- they bellowed -
was the international community
when you were swallowed
by the gallows?
Could you not see
their fingers
dripping with oil
could not hold the knife
to cut you loose
from the hangman’s noose
[The charade is over]
The masquerades were on parade
in Auckland
- [and dancing
from Port Harcourt to Abuja
London to Washington
To ringing melodies
of cash registers] -
Hiding behind grotesque masks
of diplomatic disbelief
while their hearts
heaved sighs of relief
that rivers of oil
held up by the damned 9
would now flow
Part 2 [Nov 2005]
The charade is over
The masquerades
-have unmasked themselves
in the Gulf of Guinea
Today - we are united
in our songs - of defiance
We shall chant down
every BULLET and every BARRELL
Every SHELL and every TANK
Repression
has never triumphed
over free expression
Maybe in a skirmish or two
a battle or two
But in a war of words? Never!
You think
the revolution is dead
because you hung nine men?
Emerge from your corporate bunkers
from where you run your licensed bunkering
And you will see
in the eyes of their orphans
the mothers and fathers
of tomorrows revolution
-Pining for Justice
for towns and villages
reduced - to a Shell
of themselves
Amidst the intoxicated
clinking of barrels - of crude champagne
and wobbling stomachs - of your sated tankers
You cannot see
that even if you cant see the revolution
[In the burning light of flared gas]
the revolution sees you….
Rotimi Sankore copyright 95/05
Political unrest has been widespread in Ethiopia since May elections that took the opposition close to securing a surprise victory over the ruling party. Last week, violence swept through the capital Addis Ababa as security forces cracked down on those participating in actions to protest the election result. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem calls for calm on both sides.
Since the May general elections in Ethiopia the country has been gripped by conflict. The country is only slowly returning to normal after a week long stay away called by the opposition who believed that the government robbed it of victory through unfair means. Both in June soon after the elections and now, several people have been killed and many more imprisoned.
While elections are supposed to indicate where the wishes of the people reside and both winners and losers are expected to respect the results, it is not often that easy in situations where neither is prepared for the result. Sometimes defeat can sound like victory and sometimes victory can be interpreted as defeat if the cost is too high. Both scenarios are playing themselves out in Ethiopia. The opposition has reason to be jubilant because in spite of the fields not being level they gained victories - some of them highly symbolic - against the ruling EPRDF.
In Ethiopia it is clear that neither the ruling EPRDF nor the two main opposition alliances, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), were prepared for the results and the obligation that the results impose on them in a democratic setting.
For the first time since the EPRDF came into power 15 years ago it faced a more challenging and credible electoral opposition. It lost all the seats in the capital to the opposition and lost to the opposition in other regions in particular the Amhara region. Its immediate response was to see the result as a challenge to its authority. It was obvious that its political and security intelligence misinformed it about its popularity. It was clear to most observers that after 15 years the EPRDF has become vulnerable. As the likelihood of an armed overthrow of the regime has diminished even among the country's largest nationality, The Oromo (who have been the longest military opponents of the EPRDF), peaceful resistance and democratic opposition has grown.
As it happened to other post revolutionary regimes across Africa whether in Zimbabwe or Uganda, the longer the EPRDF stayed in power the less 'grateful' people became for its liberation struggle. Uganda is the more obvious parallel. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, like President Museveni before him, became a former revolutionary turned free-market reformer with new best friends in Washington, London, Brussels, and other patented capitals of what he would (before) have called, rightly, 'centres of imperialism'. Like other Clubbers in the now ageing 'New generation of African Leaders' Meles is a very fiercely intellectual leader who is able to stoutly articulate and defend his positions.
Again. like Uganda, Ethiopia is heavily dependent on aid but somehow the EPRDF until recent years managed to stave off Western intervention in its political affairs. A kind of dual mandate partnership (familiar to Ugandans) developed whereby Meles pursued neo-liberal economic policies of the IMF/World Bank and the dominant western powers gave him a huge discount on internal political matters.
But acceptance in the West also comes with its own conflicting demands and expectations. It is always the case that the more our leaders become popular abroad the less they are at home and the more complacent they become about their domestic constituency - hence they are ill-prepared to think of any possible defeat.
The opposition on the other hand - after overcoming initial timidity, lack of clarity or better alternative socio-economic policies - begin to unite in opposition. Some people will just want change for the sake of it. Younger generations also emerge who now take the gains of the past as their starting point - not the ceiling on what is possible. This is where former revolutionaries in power become reactionaries, taking political opposition to be treason, shooting demonstrators, jailing leaders of the opposition and generally punishing the people for not voting wisely (i.e. electing them in perpetuity).
The opposition too, having spent too long in opposition is often unprepared for its victories and reacts either too triumphantly or with selective de-legitimation. The former exaggerates how close they believe they have come to seizing the state house while the latter makes them to always query the result only in areas where they did not win.
A process of mutual demonisation ensues between an insecure government humbled by the polls - especially losing in the capital where the government is based - thereby becoming psychologically an occupying force. The opposition on the other hand suffers the delusion that its control of the centre and a few cities also mean that it is de facto government and is often tempted to behave so by unleashing 'people power' which is often met by a government show of power. This situation needs statesmanship and leadership to break the impasse. The tragedy for Ethiopia so far has been the absence of such vision. The government needs to accept that those who voted against it have neither committed any sin or crime while the opposition also have to accept that those in power are not from Mars but fellow Ethiopians with whom they have political differences. There cannot be meaningful dialogue if the government uses guns and prisons as its first weapon of choice and the opposition regards the government as illegitimate.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa
* Please send comments to
The Trial and Other Stories
Ifeoma Okoye
African Heritage Press, 2005
Distributed by African Books Collective Limited
“The Trial and Other Stories” is a collection of poignant and painful narratives about widowhood in Nigeria. Written by Ifeoma Okoye, herself a widow, these stories represent a number of different situations that women find themselves in once widowed.
Okoye has managed to capture many different sides of women’s lives in her collection. Each experiences hardship, pain and suffering, but all persevere in the end, highlighting women’s capacities to struggle and triumph through adversity.
“Soul Healers” tells the story of Somadi, whose children were taken from her upon the death of her husband. Sent away from all that is familial, she is destined to live a life separate from her children, according to the traditional laws. Placing all of her trust in a taxi driver, she attempts to kidnap them from school, where she finds them hungry and uncared for by her former husband’s family. While they shy away from her at first, distrustful and afraid, they come around when she is forced to tell the taxi driver her story. And so does he, taking them to safety so that they may live together as mother and children.
In the next story, “Between Women,” Ebuka is a widow whose only daughter is being cared for by her mother-in-law. Ebuka is forced to work in the city for a family who regularly overworks and abuses her, just so she can provide financial support for her daughter. When her child falls sick and Ebuka asks for time off to bring money to the hospital, her boss, who never allows any time off, refuses. Forced to make a decision between losing her job and it’s financial security, or her daughter’s health, Ebuka chooses her daughter, running away in the early morning.
“A Strange Disease” offers a humorous solution to a serious problem. With the passing of her husband, Enu is left to fend off the advances of her late husband’s brother. Already married with two wives, selfish and demanding, Onumba does not make the ideal partner, but he won’t give up. Enu decides on a plan to make him less interested – using some white-out that a niece had left in her home, Enu paints her pubic area with it, and shows Onumba her “disease,” knowing full well that he dreads being ill. Her tactic works, and she is left to continue life free from his harassment.
In “The Voiceless Victim” a privileged woman is forced to confront her prejudices and stereotypes against homeless people, and a young, widowed mother in particular. Walking past an area where beggars frequent, she notices a young woman arguing with another beggar, and quickly dismisses her as just another lazy, homeless person. After a series of meetings, she learns that this young woman was forced into a marriage at an early age for the bride price she would get, which was needed to pay for medicine for her father. This young woman, Ebele, lost her husband and was forced into the streets to beg, having been unable to find any work. By telling this woman her story, Ebele forces her to confront these prejudices and makes her realize that Ebele is a victim of an unbalanced and unfair system.
The rest of the stories in this book continue on in the same way. Each tells a story, while at the same time allowing us insight into the realities faced by widows in Africa. Okoye has done an excellent job of allowing us to enter into the lives of diverse women, and inspires compassion and understanding.
* Reviewed by Karoline Kemp, a Commonwealth of Learning Young Professional Intern with Fahamu.
More than 40 representatives of youth, women’s networks, national coalitions and faith-based organizations organized in Africa under the Global Call to Action against Poverty, and representing NGOs and civil society organizations gathered in Harare from Monday to Thursday 7-10 November. The meeting reviewed the status of the campaign in Africa and tentatively agreed on priorities that would guide their activities for the next two years. The meeting acknowledged that a lot of positive gains had been made in mobilizing communities in Africa to participate actively in the designated White Arm Band Days and that GCAP had been widely embraced by key poverty campaigners in Africa.
The West Africa Democracy Radio (WADR) has started broadcasting on Monday 14 November 2005. The station will broadcast from its studios in Dakar, Senegal, on 17555 KHz on Short Wave to the whole of West Africa and beyond, and on 94.9 FM in Dakar. In the near future, it will broadcast online, and also through local community radio partners in the Mano River Union (MRU) countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. These partners will also generate some of its broadcast content. A brainchild of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), WADR is conceived to be the hub of a West African network of public, private and community radio stations, creating an avenue for networking between the radio stations and a channel for dialogue among the peoples of the respective countries they serve.
Published by the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), this article focuses on the female condom, considering its usage and effectiveness to date and its prospects for the future. Evidence is provided which indicates that the female condom is highly effective at preventing pregnancy, and at least as effective as the male condom in preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV and AIDS. However, the paper cites studies of actual use in the United States where users rated the female condom as being much less acceptable than the male condom for a range of reasons.
Radio Salus, the first University/Community radio station in Rwanda, will be officially launched by the National University of Rwanda on Friday November 18. The station is based in the southern town of Butare. Radio Salus will be broadcasting on 97.0 FM.
Source: UNESCO
This World Bank evaluation assesses the effectiveness of its country-level HIV and AIDS assistance. Findings show that political commitment is needed from all levels and efforts are needed to expand this commitment beyond top levels. The document highlights how strengthening the institutional capacity of Ministries of Health to address HIV and AIDS is critical to the effectiveness of the national AIDS response.
Community Multimedia Centres (CMCs) combine community radio and telecentre services to form a comprehensive information and communication platform serving local development needs. Launched in 2001 by UNESCO, today there are over 50 centres in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean and scale-up projects are underway in Mali, Mozambique and Senegal.
An expanding network of community radios is strengthening civil society and supporting community development and social change in Mozambique. The increase from one community radio station in 1994 to nearly fifty in 2005 means that more than a third of the population now lives within reach of a station. Regular, sustainable, impact assessments are essential if these stations are to be effective.
The Kruger National Park is concerned plans to enlarge the Massingir dam in Mozambique will destroy one of the world's largest breeding grounds for the Nile Crocodile. The higher dam wall and newly installed sluice gates would cause sediment to back up into the 8km-long Crocodile Gorge, said spokesperson for the Kruger National Park, Raymond Travers. The gorge is in the park and, while it is not generally accessible to tourists, it is the world's largest breeding ground for the Nile Crocodile, he said.
A fresh warning has been sounded on Lake Victoria's shrinking water levels. Scientists say the trend could spell doom to the East African region. The lake, they said in Arusha at a regional scientific conference, was losing its water at an alarming rate and called for urgent official interventions. Senior Kenyan, Ugandan and Tanzanian government officials, who were present, agreed and said the more than 30 million East Africans eking out a living from the basin could face starvation and other problems if the trend was not reversed.
Source: Nation Media
Although armed conflict in Darfur continues to leave millions of people homeless, vulnerable to violence, and susceptible to potentially life-threatening diseases, a report released by the Brookings Institution University of Bern Project on Internal Displacement says that, contrary to popular belief, African Union (AU) peacekeeping troops have made a difference in the region.
President Olusegun Obasanjo has expressed support for the proposal by the African Union (AU) to increase the membership of the United Nations (UN's) Security Council to 26. He stated this at the inaugural lecture for Course 14 of the National War College (NWC), noting that Africa has a vital role to play in the planned changes in the UN's Security Council, which is geared towards global peace. President Obasanjo, who was represented at the occasion by the Minister of State for Defence, Roland Oritsejafor, said the AU was in support of the proposal by the Group of Four, dubbed Model A, except that it will give the new members veto privileges.
Scientists, health workers and politicians met Sunday, November 13 in Cameroon to discuss new ways to battle malaria and increase awareness of the deadly disease, which kills thousands a day. Some 1,500 participants from 65 countries are expected to attend the six-day conference to discuss critical research on all aspects of malaria control, said Louis Da Gama, a spokesman for the UK-based group Massive Effort Campaign and co-organizer of the event.
The United Nations Population Fund has launched a campaign in Ghana to spread awareness of obstetric fistula, the dangerous health condition that hits many young African mothers especially hard. UNFPA experts in Ghana urged the media to pay more attention to fistula, saying it could help suffering women overcome the isolation and low self-esteem they often face.
Nigeria recently made a $6.4 billion payment to the Paris Club that fell in step with the schedule laid out by the International Monetary Fund to help the African country write off 60% of its $30 billion debt. Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Reuters that once the government spent another $6 billion under the Paris Club accord, after an IMF review scheduled in March, its total foreign debt would decline to $5 billion from $35 billion now.
The realisation of the MDGs has been impacted upon by some of the rules, recent proposals and developments in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This paper shows some of the effects the multilateral organisation has had on the MDG goals and targets that government leaders have collectively wanted to achieve. It begins with a brief assessment of the problems arising from the implementation of WTO rules. This is followed by an outline of the main features and effects of some of the WTO agreements and a discussion on the decision-making system and the structural or systemic aspects of the WTO. Some suggestions for improving the situation are made for each of the topics.
“We invite you to join the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence electronic discussion taking place in the form of a listserve. The discussion allows activists to collaboratively develop themes and strategies for the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign.”
If you are interested in joining the discussion or if you have any questions, please contact the Center for Women's Global Leadership at [email protected].
Since the end of October, riots across France have made headlines worldwide. This article provides some context for the current debate on the French integration model. In general, applications from African countries have been decreasing.The rising number of asylum applications has challenged the adequacy of French asylum policies. France does not provide for systematic refugee resettlement, nor does it yet accept the "safe third country" concept whereby an asylum seeker coming from outside the EU but through a "safe" country may be, under certain conditions, returned to this "safe" country. In addition, asylum seekers have limited access to social welfare benefits and are not allowed to work.
Police and war veterans in Masvingo have looted farm equipment worth more than $15 billion from a commercial farm, four years after the farm was invaded, The Standard has learnt. The owner of the farm and equipment, Tilma Pepler, told The Standard that riot police led by Assistant Commissioner Loveness Ndanga pounced on his Rhodene home where he has kept the equipment since his eviction from the farm. He said they "looted" all the equipment. "Police and people I suspect to be war veterans came and seized all my farming equipment. They said it was an order from the government. They were led by assistant commissioner L Ndanga," Pepler said.
Seventy-eight healthy South Africans are to test a new candidate HIV vaccine over the next 18 months, reports the Mail and Guardian. The International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and a United States company need to determine if the medication is safe and effective. Called "tgAAC09", the preventive HIV vaccine candidate is based on HIV subtype C, the subtype of the virus most prevalent in Southern and East Africa. "The trial should take about 18 months to complete and will enrol 78 volunteers in total -- men and women -- who are in good health. TgAAC09 is designed to elicit two different types of immune responses, an antibody response and a cell-mediated response. The vaccine consists of an artificially made copy of the HI virus and cannot cause HIV infection or Aids," the IAVI said on Monday, November 14.
Visitors to Mbeere district in Kenya's Central Province can hardly miss them: bags of charcoal laid on either side of the road. Those who sell the bags are far less visible, however. They hide in the surrounding dense vegetation, only appearing to make hurried sales. The reason for this secrecy? Fears of imminent arrest by officials who are trying to curb the illegal logging in Mount Kenya forest which supplies the wood used to make charcoal. There are fears that tree felling may decimate the 2,700 square kilometre forest, which serves as a catchment area for no less than 60 rivers.
At the end of this month, the Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission (Instance Équité et Réconciliation or IER) will be handing its final report to King Mohammed VI and formally ending its mandate. The Commission's final report and the processes it recommends provide Morocco with a tremendous opportunity to advance victims' rights, prevent future abuses, and strengthen the rule of law. In its 33-page report, "Transitional Justice in Morocco: A Progress Report," the ICTJ traces the historical process, dating back to the early 1990's, that led to the formation of the IER in early 2004, and places its work within that larger context.
The Electoral Institute of South Africa has a position open. Responsibilities include providing overall support to the Local Government Programme Officer, assisting in the development and implementation of all local government Projects, arranging and facilitating workshops, assisting in the conceptualisation of project proposal, researching and analysing relevant policies and legislation, general administration and the preparation
of reports.
Zimbabwe's government has used state-sponsored brutality to quash dissent, and women on the front lines of protest are paying a heavy personal price. In an unlit park in central Harare on the night of Zimbabwe's March parliamentary elections, more than a hundred women gathered to sing and pray for peace. In this increasingly authoritarian southern African nation even public prayer is deemed a threat to public security. Several dozen police brandishing batons quickly arrived in tan Land Cruisers and pushed the women into the cars. By the end of the evening 300 women, most ordinary mothers and grandmothers struggling to feed hungry families, were in jail and at least nine had been beaten so badly they required hospitalization.
The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation, with over 110 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. We are currently looking for a highly motivated, independent thinking staff member who will be located in Pretoria, South Africa. Working under the supervision of the Southern Africa Project Director, you will assist the team in overall office management and provide research assistance contributing to reports on security, political, governance, human rights and social issues related to the Southern Africa and Horn of Africa regions. The position will be based in our centrally located office in Pretoria.
Is the water privatization heavily promoted by the International Financial Institutions, a good thing for the poorest in the developing countries? A new report by Nancy Alexander of the Citizen's network on essential services takes a skeptical view. A UN report, "Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Liberalization of Trade in Services and Human Rights" claimed that increased foreign private investment in public services can upgrade national infrastructure, introduce new technology and provide employment. However, the report also argues that it can lead to negative impacts to the poorest.
Kindernothlife, a German NGO and Eurodad member, has produced a new report, assessing the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) processes in Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia from a child rights perspective. The report links up with a previous study, titled 'Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: blind to the rights of the (working) child?', which showed that the majority of the PRSPs did not deal with child labour. The study in 2004 called for a case study with a wider scope that also goes beyond a mere text analysis. This report aims to address this gap.
In the context of a renewed commitment to Education For All (EFA) at Dakar, this study examines the apparent failure of most attempts to provide educational services to nomadic groups. The study focuses on Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It provides an insight into the challenges, constraints and opportunities for using education as part of an intersectoral approach to meet the development needs of nomadic communities.
Authors: Hallak, J.; Poisson, M.
Produced by: Journal of Education for International Development (JEID) (2005)
This journal article argues that the problems posed by corruption in education have been neglected for too long. It details the three assumptions that underlie the IIEP's project on "Ethics and corruption in education". It then describes the approach followed to tackle this sensitive issue within the framework of the project. The article summarises a few conclusions drawn from the research thus far in three areas: teacher behaviour, teacher management, and private tutoring.
Authors: Marphatia, A.A.; Archer, D.; ActionAid International; Global Campaign for Education
Produced by: ActionAid International (2005)
This paper intends to demonstrate the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) role in constraining countries from increasing public expenditure in education to meet the Education For All (EFA) goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The findings are based on research and country case studies undertaken by ActionAid International offices in Guatemala, Bangladesh, India, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone during 2004-05. This document argues that the tight macroeconomic policies imposed by the IMF in return for loans prevent countries from increasing public spending, making it difficult or impossible to provide education for all citizens.
A key starting point of this resource is that "monitoring and evaluation processes rely on personal judgement as well as theory. Bear in mind that there is no single, best evaluation method." Given these challenges, the resource does not provide a set of rules for monitoring and evaluating information and communication for development (ICD) programmes; rather, it introduces a range of approaches for users to choose from at various stages in programme design and evaluation.
This event is organised by CODESRIA, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa. Selected topics to be explored include: mobilising citizen participation in the development process; engendering African development; culture, tradition and custom in African development; social policies for sustained African economic development; trade and industrial policies for sustained development in Africa; and the media in the development process.
"Governments, aid donors and the development community at large are increasingly asking for hard evidence on the impacts of public programs claiming to reduce poverty. Do we know if such interventions really work? How much impact do they have?" Mobilised by these questions, Martin Ravallion uses this paper to critically examine what he calls "the archetypal evaluation problem": impact evaluation (or "counterfactual analysis") often does not strongly attribute observed outcomes to the specific programme being evaluated.
An African roster for African professionals with a mandate to support international and humanitarian peace building missions within Africa seeks a Progamme Officer. The Officer will be based in Bulawayo and report to the Director and should be available to start in January 2006.
Female candidates in Egypt's upcoming legislative elections should be given as much say in their country's political affairs - and as much coverage in the media - as their male counterparts, women parliamentary hopefuls said on Monday, November 14. Speaking at a conference held by the Arab Alliance for Women (AAW), a local NGO, women candidates from a range of backgrounds stressed the need for more female representation in national politics and for a greater recognition of the role of women in society as a whole. “Despite clear differences in their ideologies, all the candidates are united in their struggle to voice women’s concerns,” Heber Radwan, AAW chairwoman, said at the conference. “This election is the first step towards the true integration of women into Egyptian politics.”
Source: Agenda News
This report examines the progress of the Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325) and it's call on the United Nations and Member States to increase the participation of women in decision-making and peace processes, to ensure the protection of women and girls, and to institute gender perspectives and training in peacekeeping.
Source: Agenda News
Differences in labour force attachment across gender are important to explain the extent of the gender earnings gap. However, measures of women's professional experience are particularly prone to errors given discontinuity in labour market participation. For instance, the classical Mincerian approach uses potential experience as a proxy for actual experience due to lack of appropriate data. Such biases in the estimates cannot be ignored since the returns to human capital are used in the standard decomposition techniques to measure the extent of gender-based wage discrimination.
Source: Agenda News
Unscrupulous individuals are using elaborate internet scams to prey on vulnerable people by offering them resettlement in exchange for money, the UN refugee agency has warned.There is always a risk of fraud in migration programmes. Governments have long recognized that people wanting to migrate will resort to exploiting vulnerabilities in admission procedures and systems. At the same time, desperate refugees can fall victim to fraudulent schemes offering them a quick-fix solution to their plight.UNHCR has been combatting these and other forms of fraud for some time.
Ex-deputy president Jacob Zuma sang and danced with supporters on Saturday, November 12 after hearing that his corruption trial would start in the high court on July 31 next year. Zuma was cheered by the large crowd outside the magistrate's court as he sang the struggle song Mshini. According to people in the crowd, the song means "bring my machine" but implies "bring my machinegun". Speaking in Zulu, Zuma explained the judicial process to the crowd and asked for them to be disciplined and not repeat any incidents such as the one at his previous court hearing when people burnt T-shirts showing the face of President Thabo Mbeki. Earlier a court official formally served Zuma with an indictment outlining the two corruption charges against him.
Developing countries are to receive greater funding and transfers of technology to boost their use of renewable energy supplies. The pledge was made yesterday (8 November) in a declaration signed by 78 countries at the Beijing International Renewable Energy Conference. Representatives of Brazil, China, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the European Union were among those who signed the declaration. The United States, however, was not involved. Because progress in renewable energy technology has been led by developed countries, most developing nations have been left behind, said Mohamed El-Ashry, a senior fellow with the United Nations Foundation.
Africa's science academies should do more to advise their governments on key issues that affect the continent, a conference in Kenya has heard. Delegates at the meeting called for stronger links between the academies and their counterparts in developed nations to help them fulfil this role. The 7-8 November meeting was the first conference of the African Science Academy Development Initiative (ASADI), a ten-year, US$20 million project funded by the US-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dgroups is a starting point for fostering groups and communities in international development, a partnership which caters to both individuals and organisations by offering tools and services that bring people together. Dgroups is an online home for groups and communities interested in international development. In Dgroups, one can find the online tools and services needed to support the activities of a team, a group, a network, a partnership or a community. Dgroups is also a place to find groups who are interested in the same topics in international development as you.
The United Nations has developed procedures to curb sexual abuse by peacekeepers, but the measures are not being put into force because of a deep-seated culture of tolerating sexual exploitation, an independent review reported Tuesday, November 15.
Libya's Supreme Court should consider the torture claims of six foreign medical workers on death row for injecting 426 Libyan children with HIV, Human Rights Watch said. The court will review the case. Four of the six defendants, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, told Human Rights Watch in May that they confessed after enduring torture, including beatings, electric shock and sexual assault. Libyan officials denied all of the defendants prompt access to a lawyer, they said. In June, a Tripoli court acquitted 10 Libyan security officials accused of using torture against the defendants.
Senegal has arrested the former Chadian dictator, Hissène Habré, on an international arrest warrant from Belgium for atrocities committed during his eight-year rule. The Senegalese government must now fulfill its international legal obligations to extradite Habré to face trial in Belgium, Human Rights Watch said. Habré was arrested, taken to jail, then brought before a prosecutor to be questioned and then transferred to the penitentiary wing of a hospital in the Senegalese capital Dakar, where he has lived in exile since 1990. On September 19, a Belgian judge issued an international arrest warrant for Habré under Belgium's "universal jurisdiction" law, which allowed prosecution of the worst atrocities no matter where they were committed.
In a historic judgment, the Federal High Court of Nigeria has ordered companies to stop gas flaring in the Niger Delta, as it violates guaranteed constitutional rights to life and dignity. In a case brought against the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (Shell), Justice C. V. Nwokorie ruled in Benin City that the damaging and wasteful practice of flaring by all the major companies, including ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, TotalFinaElf and Agip, as well as Shell, in joint ventures with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, cannot lawfully continue and must stop.
Source: Friends of the Earth
Uganda has ratcheted up its efforts in developing its geothermal resources. According to technocrats in the energy ministry, the country is currently pursuing a vast programme that could see the nation feed geothermal electricity into its grid, in perhaps, less than half a decade. The development is part of an extensive government initiative to harness all possible sources of energy and in time, to permanently fix the continuing power supply instabilities.
Education for All of the world's children is a global priority. The reality, however, is that millions of the world's poorest children will be denied their chance at education unless there are special interventions that target their development. Since such children do not form a special social category in poverty eradication intervention programmes, their inclusion in EFA efforts tends to be a hit-or-miss phenomenon. This publication looks specifically at poor children both in and out of school who live in Uganda.
Source: UNESCO
The IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG) has launched a protest against Tunisia's hosting of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the wake of attacks on journalists and human rights activists in Tunis in the past few days. They note a serious deterioration in conditions related to freedom of expression in Tunisia, particularly with respect to independent organisations , harassment of journalists and dissidents, independence of the judiciary, and the imprisonment of the human rights lawyer, Mohamed Abbou, for voicing his opinion in articles on the Internet. Cumulatively these changes lead us to conclude that the Tunisian government is seeking to further stifle dissent on the eve of the WSIS. "In such conditions," they said, "Tunisia is not a suitable place to hold a United Nations World Summit." The coalition has cancelled plans to hold a WSIS side events, saying a series of incidents, including the stabbing of a French reporter, show how unfit Tunisia is to host a conference on freedom of expression and the Internet.
Ethiopian authorities are hunting down journalists, civil society activists and opposition leaders in a bid to clamp down on government critics following public protests that left more than 40 dead at the hands of security forces, report the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association (EFJA), the International Press Institute (IPI), Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The Zambian government has rejected a proposal to guarantee citizens the right to access public information as part of a new constitution being drafted for the country, report the Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA) and ARTICLE 19. The Justice Minister, George Kunda, says the government is opposed to Clause 72 in the draft constitution, which provides for access to information, because it would compromise state security. The government has also rejected provisions in the draft constitution which would have protected all electronic and print media from government interference and shielded journalists from disclosing their sources except in court.
Government and donor countries are curtailing progress towards Education for ALL (EFA) - and broader poverty reduction - by according only marginal attention to the 771 million adults living without basis literacy skills,' says the fourth edition of the EFA Global Monitoring report, Literacy for Life'.
Africa looks set to be betrayed by rich nations at World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in December in what would be a bitterly disappointing end to 2005 - the supposed "Year for Africa" - a new report published today (November 14) by Oxfam reveals. On the same day that Prime Minister Tony Blair will make a speech on the importance of concluding the WTO talks, Oxfam's report warns that Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer in the past 25 years and sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world to have lost market share in agricultural trade.
Source: Millennium Campaign
Though the armed conflict that plagued the Democratic Republic of Congo for years mostly has subsided, access to health care has not improved for many Congolese, according to a Medecins Sans Frontieres survey. Between 45% and 67% of Congolese surveyed in five regions of the country said they had no access to basic health care.
The first armoured personnel carriers (APCs) intended to enhance the peacekeeping capabilities of the African Union (AU) forces are expected to arrive in the western Sudanese region of Darfur on Friday, according to an AU official. Noureddine Mezni, spokesman of the AU in Khartoum, said on Tuesday that the Sudanese authorities had authorised the deployment of 105 APCs donated by the government of Canada. "The first three or four APCs will arrive in El Fasher [the capital of North Darfur] on 18 November with a direct flight from Dakar [the capital of Senegal]," Mezni said, adding that it would take a month for all of the APCs to arrive in Darfur.
A continuing economic crisis in Benin has left the government without funds to pay for presidential elections in March 2006, according to Finance Minister Cosme Sehlin. Unlike the heads of states of regional neighbours Chad, Burkina Faso and Gabon, President Mathieu Kerekou has agreed to step down next March when his second mandate expires. But Benin's cash crunch could harm this gesture of democracy. During parliamentary question time last week, Finance Minister Sehlin confirmed that government books are in the red to the tune of US $57 million, with no means of raising the US $58 million more to pay for elections.
The Independent Electoral Commission of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced on Monday (November 14) that 150,199 people had been caught registering to vote twice. Commission Chairman Apollinaire Malumalu said 300,398 of the names on the voter list had been registered twice with the same fingerprints. "Any voter who deliberately registers more than once will be struck off the electoral list," he said, referring to the article 45 in the country's voter bill. So far, cases of fraud have been only discovered in Kinshasa where registration ended in July. Registration started there late and is still taking place in several provinces because of logistical problems particularly in Bandundu and Equateur.
The creation of a government of national unity was meant to unite war-torn Sudan following the January signing of the southern peace agreement, but analysts have cautioned that recent political developments could jeopardise national unity. Among other challenges, these events show that Sudan's ruling elite still seem reluctant to share power with the former southern rebels as stipulated under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), one analyst said.
President Eduardo Dos Santos used the occasion of Angola's independence day celebrations to deliver a speech promising elections and greater prosperity, but critics said he failed to outline a proper timetable for the polls. Thousands - including Portugal's president and several African leaders - turned up at Luanda's Cidadela football stadium on Friday for the festivities, the biggest celebrations since independence from Portugal 30 years ago. "The reality that the country is living today allows us to look with optimism to the realisation of the next elections," Dos Santos said in a rare address to the nation. "We are creating the material, institutional and psychological conditions for them to be free, transparent and with a high level of participation."
Chadian authorities on Tuesday (November 15) insisted they had the situation under control a day after attacks on military camps in and outside the capital, N'djamena, that left at least two of the gunmen dead and 15 under arrest. "The city is calm. People have returned to work as normal," Communications Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor told IRIN from the capital. In the early hours of Monday, a score of armed men in civilian dress attacked an army training centre about 25 kilometres south of N'djamena, while a dozen assailants staged an attack against the National Guard and Nomad Camp in the capital, the government announced Monday evening.
Africa won its first female president on Tuesday when counting ended in Liberia’s historic presidential poll, with former World Bank economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf garnering 59.4 percent against former soccer star George Weah. "Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has received 4778,526 votes corresponding to 59.4 percent and George Weah has received 327,046 votes corresponding to 40.6 percent,” said the head of the election commission, Frances Johnson-Morris.
As a part of the coalition supporting the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, Pambazuka News is profiling various aspects of the Protocol over a six-week period. This week we will look at African women’s rights to land and property. Under Article 19, the Right to Sustainable Development, the protocol states that:
“Women shall have the right to fully enjoy their right to sustainable development. In this connection, the States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to:
c) promote women’s access to and control over productive resources such as land and guarantee their right to property.”
Women in many African countries live within the confines of patriarchy. One of the ways in which this inequality has manifested is in regards to property and land rights. Women exist within overlapping tradition and official law – neither of which are always fair. The importance of these rights cannot be underestimated. Not only do women rely on land for food security and income, but women’s rights and social positions are held up in their access to land and property rights.
For a large proportion of African women, the options related to land are limited. Few have access to the money required to purchase land in the first place. Further, even though the day-to-day maintenance of land is often managed largely by women, their control over land is extremely limited. And should a wife lose her husband, inheritance laws do not generally favour women, leaving many vulnerable to homelessness and poverty should they not enjoy good marital and familial relationships.
These inequalities fit with the larger social settings that most African women find themselves in. While they are respected in some ways, the status of most African women is low. Discriminatory laws, policies, customs, traditions and attitudes both cause and exacerbate this overall environment for women. The effects of colonial laws also influence how women’s access to land and property are dealt with. The individualization of land tenure and market pressures have also interfered with women’s rights. The intersection of traditional and official law has done little for the rights of women in Africa. In communal land systems, women sometimes had rights to resources as they were, and continue to be, household managers. When land tenure was individualized, as has been the case in most of Africa, women lost this access, and were registered under their husband’s names. As a result of these dynamics, it is extremely difficult for women to enjoy the same rights and benefits of these rights, as men.
Women also suffer from an added lack of education about their rights, so in cases where women are actually accorded the rights of land and property ownership, it can be easy for men and other family members to deny these rights. Illiteracy and lack of access to formal courts intensify these conditions. Further, women’s representation in decision-making bodies is limited, and as a result, their voices are further silenced.
As a result of these official and unofficial policies that deny women access, ownership and control over land, families and communities suffer. That women must negotiate their rights through relationships to men, as either wives or kin, is not only unfair, but is extremely unbalanced. But women are stepping forward and asserting their rights and they are using both legal and customary means to do so. The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa will be another means to strengthen not only their rights, but their means for attaining them.
Further Reading:
UN Habitat Document on Women and Land Tenure
http://www.unhabitat.org/programmes/landtenure/documents/CSDWomen.pdf
Previous Articles:
Women and Sustainable Development - http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30299
Women in Armed Conflict - http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30122
Female Genital Mutilation - http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30050
Trafficking in Women and Children - http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=29740
Female Refugees - http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=29873
* Researched and written by Karoline Kemp, a Commonwealth of Learning Young Professional Intern with Fahamu.
Leading up to the December 2005 World Trade Organization's (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong, Pambazuka News will examine some of the issues regarding the WTO as it affects Africa. This week we look at the concept of alternatives to free trade in Africa. Last week’s article examined fair trade and free trade, and argued that under the existing conditions, free trade was doing little to help the people of Africa. Fair trade is usually held up as the alternative to this global economic system, but in reality, fair trade means a number of different things. Economists around the globe have yet to all agree on one perfect solution to current economic challenges, should one even exist. They work within a number of frameworks, advocating a series of options.
In the days leading up to the official opening of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis on Wednesday, the Tunisian authorities blocked plans to hold an alternative civil society forum, harassed human rights activists, confiscated cameras, insulted and beat people, shut down a website and disrupted meetings at the official summit venue.
(See French version below)
The fiasco over the human rights attitude of the Tunisian authorities peaked on Tuesday morning, when civil society organisations took the decision to cancel their parallel events in protest and as a show of solidarity with Tunisian civil society who, once the summit shuts down, will continue to bear the brunt of abuses by the Tunisian government. In explaining the decision to cancel events, one civil society activist said: “The Tunisian organisations feel incredibly emotional and they want a show of solidarity. We can show solidarity and draw attention to basic violations which are a contradiction of what the WSIS is trying to achieve.” Not all civil society organisations holding events abided by the protest, with some feeling that airing debates about the free flow of information that they had scheduled was more important than remaining silent.
The day before, representatives of international civil society organisations had tried to meet with their Tunisian counterparts in order to organize an unofficial parallel civil society event – a standard occurrence at large international summits designed to give a voice to those who cannot be a part of the official summit. Several attempts to secure a venue for the Citizens Summit on the Information Society had failed because booked venues had been cancelled, even when they had been pre-paid, said R. Jorgenson, co-chair of the WSIS human rights caucus.
The organisations involved had met on Monday to discuss what to do about the difficulty of securing a venue, but security police had prevented the Tunisian representatives from entering the venue where the meeting was taking place, at the Goethe Institute in Tunis. When the international representatives had joined their Tunisian colleagues outside, they were pushed and harassed. “All of us were pretty stressed and frightened,” said Jorgenson at a press briefing later, adding that: “We are supposed to be discussing how to empower people and yet we are not allowed to meet people to discuss the issues.” The Association of Progressive Communications (APC) reported on the incident as follows: “Omar Mestiri, Director of the online magazine Kalima (http://www.kalimatunisie.com) and a founder member of the National Council for Freedom in Tunisia (Conseil national pour les libertés en Tunisie - CNLT) was seized as soon as he arrived at the site for the meeting of the coordinating committee of the Citizens' Summit on the Information Society (CSIS). Bombarded with blows and insults, Mr. Mestiri kept calm, before he was able to break away from the group of plainclothes policemen.”
The website of the Citizen’s Summit on the Information Society was subsequently blocked by Tunisian authorities. Reports also circulated about a blogger having his camera confiscated by security guards after taking pictures during the registration process.
In a brief presentation held before a scheduled panel discussion entitled ‘Human Rights in the Information Society’ on Tuesday morning, civil society representatives described events that took place the day before as an attack on the right to assemble and speak freely and the subsequent blocking of the alternative summit website as “the cyber removal of the rights of people”.
Earlier reports by the Tunisian Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of free expression organisations, have repeatedly raised concerns about the imprisonment of individuals related to expression of their opinions, the blocking of websites, restrictions on freedom of association, restrictions on the freedom of movement of human rights defenders and political dissidents together with police surveillance, harassment, intimidation and interception of communications and the use of torture by the security services with impunity.
The group has called on the Tunisian government to release prisoners of conscience, end arbitrary detentions, end harassment and assaults on human rights activists, stop blocking websites, end censorship of books and newspapers, open up the press and broadcasting, respect freedom of movement, assembly and association, and allow independent investigation of alleged cases of torture.
As the summit kicks into gear the host government of Tunisia is showing no signs of recognising the contradictions between their repressive policies on freedom of expression and the essentially free flow of information on the internet. And so while thousands of delegates meet to discuss issues of internet governance and bridging the digital divide, freedom of expression activists that have angered the Tunisian government will remain behind bars.
These include Mohamed Abou, a founding member of the International Association for Solidarity with Political Prisoners and the Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. He is currently serving a three-year prison sentence after publishing an article in February 2005 on the banned web site www.tunnisnews.com, which protested President Ben Ali’s invitation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Tunisia. According to a Human Rights Watch report launched Tuesday at the WSIS ‘False Freedom: Online Censorship in the Middle East and North Africa’, his wife says that: “When I see him, his clothes are full of the blood of bugs from his mattress.”
The Human Rights Watch report also documents the arrest of youths in different parts of the country, accusing them of planning to join jihidist movements and preparing terrorist attacks. “In most cases the convictions were based heavily on the statements given to the police that the defendants later contested – without success – on the grounds that they had been extracted through torture or through threats of torture.” But as one of the report’s authors noted at the launch, increased repression associated with the internet is not only a Tunisian phenomenon – it is also a trend in the countries of Syria, Egypt and Iran also covered by the report.
The right to association and freedom of expression are basic rights that repressive governments have long tried to quash. What’s different is that the internet allows for new forms of organisation and association, so its no surprise that governments will attempt to crack down on this area also. As Charlie Lewis, from the Link Centre at Wits University explains, email and the internet allow new ways of organizing and so a website of an NGO, for example, becomes a way that people associate with and a point around which organisations assemble. One of the ways in which governments violate that right to freedom of expression and association is therefore not only through physical means, but also by blocking websites, for example.
But it is not only the right to freedom of expression that is being directly violated in Tunisia. The information society is fuelling other abuses of human rights that mostly go unrecognized. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, there is evidence that the mining of coltan – used in a wide variety of electronic devices - has fuelled the war that according to some estimates has claimed 1.8 million lives since 1997. Another example can be found in the dumping of defunct computers and other electronic equipment in Africa, which creates an environmental hangover for the continent.
As the summit moves into the rubber stamping stage, the actions of the Tunisian authorities over the last few days have raised awareness about the links between human rights and the information society, and made clear the contradictions of holding an event to discuss how to open up the internet to all in a repressive environment.
UPDATE: Reporters sans frontières (RSF), Paris reports that French international television station TV5 Monde announced the withdrawal of a two-person team in Tunis because it had been "subjected to close surveillance."
"Since 11 November, a 'Libération' journalist has been beaten and stabbed, a crew with the Belgian television station RTBF has been attacked and now, to cap it all, two TV5 journalists have been harassed," the press freedom organisation said.
* Please send comments to [email protected]
Répression à Tunis et Sommet Mondial sur la Société de l’Information
Patrick Burnett
Dans les jours qui ont précédé l’ouverture officielle mercredi du Sommet mondial sur la société de l’information (SMSI) à Tunis, les autorités tunisiennes ont bloqué tout projet de tenue d’un forum parallèle de la société civile. On a vu des activistes des droits de l’homme harcelés, des caméras confisquées, des personnes insultées et battues, un site Internet fermé et des délégués réunis en plénière perturbés.
Ce fiasco, dû à la position des autorités tunisiennes sur les questions de droits de l’homme, a atteint son paroxysme lorsque certaines organisations de la société civile ont pris la décision d’annuler leurs événements parallèles en guise de protestation et pour montrer leur solidarité avec le la société civile tunisienne qui, dès la fermeture du sommet, aura encore à supporter les abus du gouvernement tunisien. Suite à cette décision d’annuler les événements, un activiste de la société civile a déclaré : « Les ONG tunisiennes sont dans tous leurs états et ont besoin de solidarité. Nous pouvons faire montre de solidarité et attirer l’attention sur les violations qui sont contraires à l’esprit et aux objectifs du SMSI. » Toutefois, ce ne sont pas toutes les organisations de la société civile qui ont adhéré à ce mouvement. Certaines ont en effet jugé qu’il était nécessaire de tenir les débats sur la libre circulation de l’information, comme prévus, au lieu de rester silencieux.
Le jour précédent, des représentants des organisations de la société civile internationale avait essayé de rencontrer leurs homologues tunisiens en vue d’organiser un événement parallèle non officiel - ce qui est une pratique très courante lors des grands sommets mondiaux qui a pour but de donner une voix à ceux qui n’ont pas le luxe de prendre part au sommet officiel. Selon R. Jorgenson, co-président du caucus des droits de l’homme au SMSI, les organisateurs du Sommet des citoyens sur la société de l’information n’avaient pas pu trouver, malgré moult tentatives, un lieu de rencontre du fait de l’annulation de tous les événements prévus et des lieux où ils devaient se tenir, même ceux qui ont été payés d’avance.
Les organisations impliquées s’étaient rencontrées le lundi pour discuter des moyens de trouver un lieu de rencontre, mais la police tunisienne avait empêché les représentants tunisiens d’entrer dans la salle où la réunion devait se tenir, à l’Institut Goethe de Tunis. Quand les délégués internationaux avaient rejoint leurs collègues tunisiens dehors, ils ont été repoussés et harcelés. « Nous étions tous très stressés et avions peur, » a plus tard déclaré Jorgenson lors d’une conférence de presse. Il a aussi ajouté qu’ils étaient supposés discuter de voies et moyens de responsabiliser les gens, mais qu’on les avait empêché de les rencontrer pour parler de tout cela. Voici comment l’Association pour le progrès des communications (APC) en relate les faits:
« Omar Mesri, Directeur du magazine en ligne Kalima (www.kalimatunisie.com) et membre fondateur du Conseil nationale pour les libertés en Tunisie (CNTL), s’est vu empoigné dès son arrivée au lieu où devait se tenir la réunion du comité de coordination du Sommet des citoyens sur la société de l’information (SCSI). M. Mesri est resté calme, même après s’être fait rouer de coups et arroser d’insultes, et a pu s’éloigner du groupe d’ « hommes en tenue » qui l’a malmené. »
Les autorités tunisiennes ont par la suite bloqué l’accès au site Internet du Sommet des citoyens sur la société de l’information. On raconte également que la caméra d’un bloggeur a été confisquée par les gardes après qu’il avait pris des photos lors de l’inscription à l’entrée.
Dans une brève présentation tenue mardi en amont de la discussion autour d’un panel au programme sur la question des droits de l’homme dans la société de l’information, des représentants de la société civile ont décrit les événements de la vieille comme une attaque sur le droit de s’assembler et de parler librement et le blocage plus tard du site Internet du sommet alternatif comme « la cyber élimination des droits des gens ».
Le Groupe de Contrôle de la Tunisie, une coalition d’organisations pour la liberté d’expression, a plus tôt soulevé des inquiétudes concernant l’emprisonnement d’individus qui n’ont fait qu’exprimer leur opinions, le blocage des sites Internet, les restrictions relatives à la liberté d’association et de mouvement des défenseurs des droits de l’homme et des dissidents politiques, ainsi que la surveillance policière, le harcèlement, l’intimidation et l’interception de communications privées et l’usage avec impunité de la torture par les forces de l’ordre.
Le groupe a appelé le gouvernement tunisien à remettre en liberté des prisonniers dits de conscience, à arrêter les détentions arbitraires, à mettre fin à l’harcèlement et les assauts sur la personnes des activistes des droits de l’homme, à stopper les blocages de sites Internet, à mettre fin à la censure des livres et journaux, à ouvrir les voies de presse (écrite et audiovisuelle), à respecter la liberté de mouvement, de rassemblement et d’association, et à ouvrir une enquête sur les cas de torture déclarés.
Pendant que la machine du sommet se met en marche, le gouvernement tunisien ne semble guère se rendre compte des contradictions qu’il y a entre les politiques de répression qui porte atteinte à la liberté d’expression et la circulation non-stop d’informations sur Internet. Et donc au moment où des milliers de délégués se rencontrent pour parler de la question de la gouvernance d’Internet et de la réduction de l’écart numérique existant, des activistes de la liberté d’expression, qui se sont attirés l’ire de l’exécutif tunisien, croupissent en prison.
Parmi eux, Mohamed Abou, membre fondateur de l’Association internationale pour la solidarité avec les prisonniers politiques et du Centre pour l’indépendance des juges et des avocats. Il sert, en ce moment même, une peine de prison de trois ans, suite à la publication en février 2005 d’un article sur l’interdiction du site www.tunnisnews.com, qui protestait l’invitation en Tunisie par Président Ben Ali du Premier Ministre israélien Ariel Sharon. D’après un rapport de Human Rights Watch intitulé « Fausse Liberté : La Censure Sur Internet Au Proche Orient et En Afrique du nord », présenté au SMSI, sa femme a déclaré : « Quand je le voit, ses habits sont tachetés de sang à cause de la piqûre des punaises qui infestent son lit. »
Le rapport de Human Rights Watch fait aussi état de l’arrestation de jeunes dans différentes parties du pays. Ils sont tous accusés d’avoir des liens avec des organisations jihadistes et de préparer des attaques terroristes. Le rapport dit que dans la plupart des cas, les accusés ont tous été condamnés sur la base de déclarations faites à la police ; déclarations qu’ils ont ensuite contestées – en vain – arguant qu’ils y ont été contraints par le biais de la torture ou par des menaces de torture. Mais comme l’a noté un des auteurs du rapport lors de la présentation de ce dernier, le regain de la répression liée à Internet n’est pas un phénomène purement tunisien, il existe aussi dans d’autres pays tels que la Syrie, l’Egypte et l’Iran, qui ont aussi été épinglés par le rapport.
Les droits à l’association et la liberté d’expression sont des droits essentiels que les gouvernements de répression ont longtemps essayé d’escamoter. La différence c’est que Internet permet l’émergence de nouvelles formes d’organisation et d’association, donc ce n’est une surprise pour personne si les gouvernements essaient de s’attaquer à ce domaine également. Comme l’explique Charlie Lewis du Link Centre à l’université de Wits, le courriel et Internet ouvrent de nouvelles voies de formation et donc le site web d’une ONG, par exemple, devient la face qu’on associe à une organisation, de même que son point de convergence et de ralliement. Un des moyens par lesquels les gouvernements violent cette liberté d’expression et d’association est l’usage de la force, mais aussi le blocage de sites web.
Mais ce n’est pas seulement le droit à la liberté de l’expression qui est directement violé en Tunisie. La société de l’information cite également d’autres cas d’abus des droits de l’homme qui passent inaperçus. À la République Démocratique du Congo, par exemple, on a la preuve que c’est l’exploitation du coltan, utilisé dans bon nombre d’appareils électroniques, qui a attisé le feu de la guerre, qui, selon certaines estimations, a fait 1,8 millions de victimes depuis l’année 1997. Un autre exemple est le dumping de vieux ordinateurs et d’autres appareils électroniques en Afrique. Ceci crée de graves problèmes environnementaux.
Alors que le sommet tire à sa fin, il devient clair que les actions du gouvernement tunisien au cours de ces derniers jours ont suscité une prise de conscience quant aux liens entre les droits de l’homme et la société de l’information, et ont montré par là même les contradictions d’une rencontre dont l’objet est de discuter de l’ouverture d’Internet à tous, dans un environnement de répression.
INFORMATIONS DE DERNIERES MINUTES : Selon Reporters sans frontières (RSF) basé à Paris, la chaîne de télévision française TV5 Monde, qui est internationale, a annoncé le retrait de son équipe de deux journalistes de Tunis pour cause de surveillance trop rapprochée de la part des autorités tunisiennes.
Et RSF d’ajouter que depuis le 11 novembre, un journaliste de Libération a été battu et poignardé, une équipe de la chaîne belge RTBF a été attaquée et maintenant, pour couronner le tout, on harcèle deux journalistes de TV5.
*Vous pouvez envoyer vos commentaires à [email protected].
The marketing line of Skype, the internet telephony phenomenon, is “The whole world can talk for free”. That one line captures so much that is thrilling about the internet. Somehow the novelty of being able to cross boundaries, communicate and network in ways that weren’t possible before never seems to wear off, especially with new innovations popping up almost daily. Yet that one line dreamed up by the marketing experts also highlights the problem faced by the internet. This lies in the fact that unless you have a computer with broadband access you can’t talk to the world, or if you can - using traditional telephony - you certainly can’t do it for free. And because this goes for the majority of the world’s population, that means that those of us that do have access and can talk for free certainly aren’t talking to the world. We are in fact, talking to ourselves, at the expense of the world.
The theory goes like this: Providing information and communications technologies will enable people to access and create opportunities and is therefore key to development, although it’s a moot point as to whether development comes first and ICTs later. But this is why the digital divide – the gap between the information have’s and have-not’s - is such a disaster, because there are so many people without access that the development potential of the internet can never be truly realized. Only 1% of the world’s internet users are Africans, for example.
And to really drive the point home: Africa - the continent that everyone knows is the poorest in the world - has to pay seven times as much per kilobyte of data transferred via the internet than do the advanced capitalist countries.
It’s little surprise therefore, that the digital divide is one of the major themes of the WSIS process. This is not to say, though, that a solution is in hand, with historical differences of opinion over how to fund a closing of the gap leading to a lack of decisive action. Any previous suggestions for a global tax, for example, to fund the closing of the gap, has previously been opposed by those who state that that the market must take care of the problem, despite evidence that spending is down and that in the last two decades the gap has shown no signs of shrinking.
At the previous WSIS meeting in Geneva in 2003, a Digital Solidarity Fund was proposed as one way to bridge the digital divide. As a result the final Geneva summit declaration acknowledged that funding for investment in ICTs was an important issue, and requested the UN Secretary General to establish a Task Force to review the current availability of funding and report to the second part of the Summit, in Tunis. This Task Force on Financial Mechanisms for ICT for Development presented its report in December 2004. Although the idea of the Digital Solidarity Fund did not receive universal backing at WSIS, it continued to gather support, and the Fund was set up in March 2005, with a secretariat based in Geneva, but the challenge lay in collecting enough funds to make it viable. More information on this issue can be found by visiting www.panos.org.uk/iwitness/, where the information for this paragraph on the Fund was sourced from the Panos Media Toolkit No. 3 on ICT’s.
While how to finance the narrowing of the digital divide is a key component of the Tunis summit, who governs it was the topic of the moment in the lead up to the event. The key debates centre around a concern that if corporate interests gain control of the internet it will have serious implications for the extent to which access is made available to all. But calls for reform of internet governance – currently residing under the US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) – have raised fears that some governments might seek to control the internet at the expense of freedom of expression.
There are therefore two main views on internet governance. Firstly, there are those that want to maintain the status quo, with some reforms. The other view wants to see the internet come under control of the international system as a way to ensure more transparency and accountability. Increasingly, there is also a feeling that the ultimate power of the US government over Icann, even if it is only potential and not actually used, is an obstacle to a fully international, open and equitable system. This information on Icann was sourced from the Panos Media Toolkit on ICTs, No1, available from the website www.panos.org.uk/iwitness/.
The US, however, is strongly opposed to reform and believes that the internet is best served by maintaining Icann as the current system. This deadlock has meant that predictions in the lead up to the summit were that it would pack up without concrete agreement. This has indeed been the case, with civil society generally disappointed with the outcomes of the summit and weak language expected from governments in the final summit statement – essentially language designed to cover up the failure of the summit.
* Please send comments to [email protected]