Pambazuka News 426: The deepening economic and climatic crisis
Pambazuka News 426: The deepening economic and climatic crisis
South Africa's president Kgalema Motlanthe, current chairman of the Southern African Development Community, SADC, has been mandated to present a request for an eight-billion US dollar lifeline for Zimbabwe at the G20 summit in London on April 2. He will also have the unenviable task of pleading with the leaders of the world's richest countries to lift travel and visa restrictions imposed on President Robert Mugabe and more than 200 of his party leaders, government officials and loyalists.
On April 27, 2009 relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other MOSOP members will bring Shell to trial in New York for the company’s complicity in the death of the Ogoni 9. Join us at this benefit for Justice in Nigeria Now (JINN) to support JINN while socializing and learning about the Ogoni and the upcoming trial.
On March 4th, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan. In retaliation, 13 NGO’s were banished from the country the day after, a number that rose to 16 within the week. As a result, a handful of projects have halted operations: those offering drinkable water supply, food distribution, health care and teaching systems among others.
Opponents to the Haute Autorite de la Transition (High Authority for the Transition) have been holding daily demonstrations in the Malagasy capital since March 21, 2009. Last Saturday's protest was harshly repressed by the security forces, and resulted in at least 34 injured people, including children.
South African prosecutors say they will announce on Monday whether they will drop corruption charges against African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma. South Africa media has been full of speculation that the charges will be dropped but a prosecution spokesman said the decision could go either way.
In an attempt to confront the current economic crisis by encouraging pro-poor investment in housing, Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, Thursday signed six agreements with project partners from Argentina, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania and Uganda with the aim of providing funds for affordable housing and infrastructure.
Sudan will hold general elections in 2010 - a year later than expected - the electoral commission has announced. The deputy chairman of the commission, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, said the electoral process would begin next month and finish in February next year. Under the 2005 peace deal to end years of war in the south, the elections were supposed to be held this year.
Guinea's military authorities have released three former ministers after they agreed to repay money they are accused of embezzling. The three, who include former Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare, were arrested last week. They have already repaid the first instalments of the money. However, another ex mines minister was "unco-operative" and remains in custody.
A ban on civil servants in Botswana wearing tight or revealing clothes to work is "sexist", a women's group says. The new directive said they could be disciplined for turning up in tight skirts or trousers, sleeveless tops, or clothes that showed cleavages or backs. The BBC's Letlhogile Lucas says women are particularly angered by a ban on headscarves and elaborate hairstyles.
Guinea-Bissau's former Prime Minister Francisco Jose Fadul is recovering in hospital after being beaten by people dressed as soldiers. Mr Fadul said 15 armed men in uniform had raided his house, assaulting him and his wife and stealing computers, phones and even their wedding rings. The beating came after he had urged the government to hold the military to account for alleged corruption.
The main objective of the G20 meeting was to save global capitalism. The emphasis on more regulations, the attacks on tax havens, the reference to the “moralization of capitalism” all converge toward the same objective: restore trust in global capitalism and some of the legitimacy it has lost in the eyes of the general public.
One of the most remarkable decisions of the G20 is to triple the IMF sources in order to increase its lending capacity to “poor” and middle-income countries. If this decision may save the institution from financial bankruptcy, it cannot, however, save it from moral and intellectual bankruptcy. In fact, the world financial crisis is a further illustration of the abject failure of the policies advocated by this institution along with the World Bank and the WTO. .
So tripling the IMF sources is not good news for Africa because it will only give the institution more power to continue imposing the same failed and ruinous policies. It is a new debt cycle that will start with the loans the IMF will be making with these resources. For Africa, the IMF is part of the problem, not of the solution. Therefore, any move aimed at strengthening it is not in the interest of Africa.
As expected, the G20 has failed to rise to the challenge of proposing structural changes in the world monetary, financial and trading system. In some respects, the Stiglitz Commission has made bolder and more interesting proposals to respond to the crisis. However, those proposals remain somehow within the confines of global capitalism.
But the genuine solutions to the current multiple world crises lie in the shift in paradigm. This is one of the messages sent by the tens of thousands of protesters who jammed the streets in London for two straight days. They not only denounced the horrors and crimes of global capitalism but also stressed the need to move toward alternative policies which would put people at their center, not profit and greed.
Some 250,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been displaced following an operation to flush out Hutu rebels, aid agency Oxfam has said. The joint operation against the rebels earlier this year was hailed as a great success by both Rwanda and DR Congo.
From the early eighties, when African students could still study for free at the Beida University in Beijing, discrimination against Africans in China was reported in the international media. Since then, the story has been regularly repeated. Just before the Beijing Olympics, racism was front page news again. In the bars of Sanlitun, the downtown area for foreigners, they were systematically denied entrance, just as in the discos of the capital.
Imagine you live in a cramped shack too small for you and your family. You fear eviction by the authorities at any time. You face the threat of your home being demolished. This is a reality faced by hundreds of thousands of people in South Africa - every single day.
The anti-poverty charity War on Want today condemned Gordon Brown and other G20 leaders for throwing money at the global economic crisis rather than addressing its root causes. According to War on Want, the G20 has used the London summit to resurrect the failed policies and institutions of the free market era, in a deal which prioritises short-term action at the expense of fundamental reform.
Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees in Kenya face abuse by corrupt and violent police and a rapidly growing humanitarian emergency in the world's largest refugee settlement, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Kenya should immediately rein in abusive police and grant new land for additional camps, while the United Nations and international donors should urgently respond to Somali refugees' basic needs.
“We need to redefine what it means to be a man, reinforce zero tolerance of gender-based violence, and make sexual and reproductive health services more relevant and user-friendly for men,” Purnima Mane, Deputy Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, told participants in a global symposium on gender equality.
The United Nations refugee agency has expressed its concern over the increasing trend by Kenyan authorities to forcibly Somali asylum seekers back to their war-torn nation. On 31 March, 31 asylum seekers – nine men, eight women and 14 children – traveling by bus to refugees camps in Dabaab, in north-eastern Kenya, were sent back to Somalia.
Intensified clashes in the Central African Republic have driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes, the United Nations reported today, noting that the unrest could prolong the humanitarian crisis that has wracked the country for more than a decade. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the violence could also jeopardize progress towards power-sharing between the Government and rebel groups.
The hybrid United Nations-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur, known as UNAMID, received a boost today from the arrival of 100 personnel from the second Egyptian Infantry Battalion. Another 100 troops from the battalion are slated to arrive tomorrow in the strife-torn western flank of Sudan as a meeting of the Tripartite Committee – comprising the Government of Sudan, the AU and the UN – is scheduled to take place for the first time in Darfur.
Ten staff including James Maridadi, the spokesperson of the Zimbabwe Prime Minister, have not been paid for over two months. The Public Service Commission has refused to confirm their appointment. heir details were submitted two months ago to the Commission headed by ZANU PF's Dr Mariyawanda Nzuwa to be on government payroll but no action has since been taken.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has warned Kenyan leaders that he will act expeditiously and relentlessly against the suspects of the post election violence that rocked Kenya last year. In a terse statement, the ICC prosecutor Louis Moreno Ocampo said through his adviser Beatrice le Fraper du Hellen that he and his team are ready to step in once called to do so. He added that when the Kenyan parliament fails to set up a special tribunal to try those behind the violence the ICC would react.
The Nigerian government has given a final term to end the lingering civil and criminal charges against Pfizer. A lawyer representing the government of that country in the 1996 suit against the drug maker said it will head to court this April if Pfizer fails to comply with the settlement agreement.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa dismissed as "false" a South African TV documentary which exposed the appalling prison conditions in Zimbabwe. The documentary showed emaciated bodies of prisoners dying from hunger and disease. RadioVOP quoted the Justice Minister accusing the SABC of fabricating the story and claiming the pictures were taken in other jails in Africa, not in Zimbabwe.
South Africa’s antiretroviral programme is short of R1-billion this year alone, yet the ANC wants to introduce a “wholly unrealistic” National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme within five years. So said SA National AIDS Council deputy chairperson Mark Heywood at the 4th South African AIDS conference.
Over 40 percent of men who have sex with men were HIV positive, suggesting a “hidden epidemic” among this group. This is according to results from a survey of 266 men in Johannesburg and Durban, the vast majority of whom were black, under the age of 25 and identified as gay rather than bisexual.
The ANC is planning a post-election apology to the nation for former president Thabo Mbeki’s disastrous HIV-Aids policy, which has been blamed for the deaths of thousands of infected people, according to a report in The Times. “We owe it to the nation. We, as MPs, were there and we failed to rise up,” said an ANC MP.
Four repentant leaders of Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) issued a fresh appeal to Islamist militants to surrender under the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation. The statement joins a series of appeals coming to light in the run up to the April 9th presidential elections.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, visited Bushmen from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana this month. He met with Bushmen who are living inside the reserve without access to water. Professor Anaya visited several Bushman communities in Botswana, including the resettlement camps Kaudwane and New Xade, where the government dumped several thousand Bushmen after forcibly evicting them from their homes inside the reserve. He also visited two Bushman communities inside the reserve, Gugamma and Metsiamenong.
Judges and gynaecologists in Benin have undergone training on the interpretation of forensic evidence in cases of violence against women, as well as in investigative procedures when dealing with rape cases. The training took place in Cotonou, the country’s economic capital, at an international conference held Mar. 16 to 19 as part of the Women's Justice and Empowerment Initiative, a U.S. government-funded programme to strengthen awareness of gender-based violence and prosecution of perpetrators in four African countries.
Throughout Mali, the use of mobile phones, the services offered by telecentres established in different parts of the country – thanks to agreements between local organisations, companies and cooperation agencies – and convergence with local radio stations, are opening doors that were unimaginable just a few years ago for people cut off from the flow of information and communications.
Can Facebook and YouTube help the poor tackle their pressing problems? Or is this promise just hype? One is faced with tough questions: Can “Web 2.0 tools” directly influence the poor themselves? Can those interested in poverty work do better to start with the “situation” rather than the “technology”? Or should one think big and dream of a network of networks encompassing a billion children and their teachers, families and friends — nearly all of the poor people in the world, and most of the rich?
All but one of Zimbabwe's ministers from the former opposition has accepted an official Mercedes Benz. When they were in opposition MDC politicians condemned the profligacy of Mr Mugabe’s Mercedes Benz-mobilised Zanu PF party. Last September, when the agreement to form a power-sharing Government was signed, senior MDC figures made an informal decision never to accept an official Mercedes.
About 100 journalists, human rights activists and media personnel gathered in Cairo this week to mark the "100 Anniversary of Press Freedom Demonstrations in Egypt 1909", an event organised by IFEX members in Egypt the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) and the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR). It was held in cooperation with the Arab Affairs Committee of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate (EJS).
On 31 March 2009, reporter Nanankoua Gnamantéh and managing editor Eddy Péhé of pro-opposition weekly "Le Répère" were convicted of "insulting" Ivorian President Laurent Gbabgo and ordered to pay fines of 20 million FCFA (approx. US$ 40,000).
Hodan* spends most of her afternoons sitting outside her tiny house in Hargeisa, capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, blowing fruity smoke from a hookah pipe, her face covered in a green paste to help her skin look its best. She does not trawl the streets looking for customers; most of her clients make appointments to visit her at home. In this conservative Muslim country, commercial sex work is practised out of sight. Hodan says not even her neighbours know how she makes a living and if they ever found out, she is sure they would evict her immediately.
On March 9th, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food presented the conclusions from his mission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to the Human Right Council. In its March 20th resolution on the right to food, the Council encourages the Special Rapporteur to continue to engage with the World Trade Organization to follow up on the issues of concern identified in his report.
Dibussi Tande reviews the following blogs:
Afrodissident
Casmir Igbokwe
What An African Woman Thinks
Bombastic Element
cc President Dadis Camara of Guinea is an example of militariat rule in West Africa, writes Jibrin Ibrahim, Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development. Camara has been avoiding elections, with claims for the need to challenge drug networks and end corruption, but, says Ibrahim, this is an agenda to legitimise his rule. The drug networks, Ibrahim suggests, are closely linked to a military ruling class that is kept in place by the state’s high expenditure on the military and its exclusion of ordinary people from politics.
cc The repression of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is akin to the worst forms of apartheid, says Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa’s former minister of intelligence. He says parallels can be drawn between Israeli occupation and apartheid,not just in the treatment of those who suffer, but also in the need for international solidarity in the support for change.
cc Barack Obama's claim that people of colour are ‘90 per cent of the way to equality’ with whites in the US is false, says activist Juan Santos in an interview with Il Manifesto’s Andrea Luchetta. Citing figures on unemployment, poverty and imprisonment, Santos suggests that the US operates under a caste system in which race plays a key part in determining social class. Obama's silence on the question of race in the run-up to the elections was tactical, says Santos – to dare to talk openly about race and oppression would alienate the millions of white centre-right voters whose support he needed to win the election. Racism, says Santos, rewards the powerful: 'They have no reason to stop racism unless its continuance results in a level of resistance that endangers the system of profit itself'.
cc In light of the recent inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the US and subsequent reflection on contributors to the black movement in African American history, Lincoln Van Sluytman questions the exclusion of militant voices, which he says played a profound and historical role in making Obama’s victory possible. Van Sluytman argues for the recognition of influential black leaders who attacked slavery, racial segregation, and the development of pan-African congresses through militant tendencies. The struggle for liberation, independence, and social justice throughout the African American historical trajectory, he says, has been marked by controversial yet mobilising ideologies and philosophies, which have had an impact on the black population in the US and upon many others worldwide.
Zimbabwean activist Prespone Matawira has devised a board game representing the game Zimbabwean women play every day, that of health, life and death.
cc We need a new financial system that is transparent and accountable to all, writes Dani Nabudere, as G20 leaders meet in London to tackle the current global economic ‘meltdown’. The G20's task, he says, is to expose all that has gone wrong, including the role the African leaders have played in the crisis, through the externalisation of billions of pounds intended for the development of their countries. These activities, Nabudere notes, have helped position Africa as a net creditor to the world, with the external assets of 40 African countries outstripping their external liabilities over the period from 1970–2004. In other words, says Nabudere, despite the widely held view that Africa was 'decoupled' from the global economy, African leaders have contributed to the activities of ‘shadow banks’ being used to create ‘toxic debt’, their wealth contributing to the global economic turmoil.
cc The Group of 20 (G20) is making a big show of getting together to come to grips with the global economic crisis, writes Walden Bello. But here's the problem with the upcoming summit in London on April 2: It's all show. What the show masks, says Bello, is a very deep worry and fear among the global elite that it really doesn't know the direction in which the world economy is heading and the measures needed to stabilise it.
cc The absence of both President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga from UN-convened talks in Geneva to assess Kenya's power-sharing deal is a sign that the country's mediation process has run into problems, writes coalition Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice (KPTJ). The mediation process, KPTJ says, is vunerable and in crisis 'because Kenya’s political leadership has continuously and consistently undermined it'.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a three-nation tour of Western Africa, pledged to break from his predecessors’ “neo-colonial” policies and forge business ties in the region. “We are still being reproached for neo-colonial interference,” Sarkozy said in Brazzaville, the capital of Republic of Congo, where he stopped after visiting the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. “I’ve already started bringing things back toward greater transparency and common interests.”
cc While most of the world is familiar with Rwandan genocide, fifteen years later the influence of a small band of deniers is growing thanks to the embrace of the deniers' arguments by a small but influential number of left-wing, anti-American journals and websites, cautions Gerald Caplan.
cc Zanu PF 'must demonstrate, by concrete positive actions, that it has turned over a new leaf and is now worthy of the nation’s trust' writes human rights lawyer Dewa Mavhinga, as he ponders the importance of trust in human relationships in general and for the future of Zimbabwe in particular, both in terms of the parties to the inclusive government and that government's contract with the country's citizens and the international community.
'I write largely because reality’s surface is for me hardly more than a mask,' says Canadian author H. Nigel Thomas in an interview with Conversations with Writers.'What’s worth knowing is beneath it'. Thomas talks about his life and sources of inspiration as a writer and about his recent novel, Return to Arcadia, an exploration of a mixed-race man's quest for sanity as he tries to cast off the burdens bequeathed by his colonial heritage.
The lives of Zimbabwean women have deteriorated dramatically over the past decade, writes activist Prespone Matawira, but now is the time to be creative and confront, unpick, challenge patriarchal and capitalist power in order to make lasting change real for women. Feminist consciousness, says Matawira, challenges many of our deep-held assumptions which are not often noticed because they are so pervasive. And its complexity helps us understand other related oppressions based on race, class, age, sexual orientation, and disability.
In an open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Haiti-based hotel owner Richard Morse warns that in its current state, HOPE, a textile act that Ki-Moon has expressed support for, will simply enrich Haiti's wealthy elite, without making any significant difference to the country's poorest. What's more he adds, its likely to spark further migration from rural to urban areas, unless economic growth is also stimulated in the countryside.
Salma Maoulidi pays tribute to Khalfani Hemed Khalfan, who died on 28 March 2009. Khalfan, an activist who campaigned primarily for the rights of people with disabilities in Zanzibar through organisation , helped bring about the passage of Tanzania's Disability Act and encouraged participation in civil society more broadly in Zanzibar.
Some of the most controversial issues stemming from the 1994 Rwandan genocide will be addressed at a symposium in Kigali, co-hosted by the University of Oxford, on 3 April 2009. The event entitled, ‘15 Years after Genocide: Where Now for Rwanda?’ will commemorate the 15th anniversary of the genocide and feature provocative presentations by leading policymakers, academics and journalists on a range of key issues affecting post-genocide Rwanda.
I am delighted to announce the launch of a which will keep you informed about the activities linked to the mandate. It will help you to keep track of developments in the large number of areas which have an impact on the enjoyment of the right to food: international trade and the role of agribusiness; food aid and development cooperation; the rights of land users and access to land; access to inputs for agriculture and intellectual property rights; legislative frameworks implementing the right to food; or the impact of climate change on the right to food.
Capitalism by its very nature encourages and rewards corruption in its many different forms, like low wages, for example. That is corrupt because it robs the worker in Africa of the value of his/her labour and transfers the wealth that that worker produces to the corrupt financial centres in Europe and America. This wealth passes through the hands of an enabling political class that is corrupt in its dealing with the working populations they govern and in its collaboration with the corrupt financial institutions. As Africa embraces free-market neo-liberal (unregulated) capitalism there is an inherent by product of increased opportunities and rewards for corruption
China’s continuing African trade investment and aid could act as a buffer for African economies, a recent report suggests. And if China can steer its way through the crisis it could become a ‘development partner of choice’, increasing its ‘soft power’ influence in the developing world and acting as a steadying factor in trade and investment compared to the West, writes Stephen Marks.
cc Western civilisation has been going through a deepening crisis over the last 120 years, writes Yash Tandon, and it is deeper than most people realise or are willing to acknowledge. Focusing on the present systemic crisis – the most recent manifestations of which are the global financial crisis and the ecological crisis – Tandon sets out how progessive forces both in the South and the North could respond to the array of challenges the world currently faces. The time has come he says, for ordinary people to take back the right to think and plan their futures from the institutions, that have in part, been the authors of the situation we find ourselves in.
I truly enjoyed reading . Rory Kilalea is so inspiring. I have been writing short stories of late which I had dismissed as not worthy to develop into a book, but feel inspired. My articles though not yet published touch on the tough life being endured by Zimbabweans and also brutal experiences of the last elections as told by eyewitnesses from my home area, something not to be forgotten for a very long time, in fact the next generation should know what happened during that year of madness so that very madness will not rise its head again. (Midlands State University)
Exactly - where is the outrage? ... the question that is goes to the heart of the matter for the entire continent. It can be answered very briefly with two responses: too many Africans gave up the ability to be outraged when they allowed their agency to become the fuel that drives 'global ngos' which have usurped our voices and our agendas - they speak for us and define what we should think about our own lives and futures.
is a crime in itself. As Mamdani shows, simplistic (and inconsistent) responses to the problems of Darfur risk creating deeper crisis not only for the people of Sudan but for available instruments of international justice. As in the Nuremberg trials which placed the lens on Nazi atrocities without addressing the complicities of American and other Western capitalists, without whose collusion the Nazi project would not have advanced to the level it did, the powerful obscure their active role in genocide.
especially when tens of millions of US dollars are raised in the name of 'saving' the people of Darfur. Yet there is no ICC oversight or UN oversight of where and how these funds are used. It is highly likely that more is spent on aidworkers, look and see travel groups than on the needs of the people. It might be possible for oversight to come from the AU?
Should the victims of some of the more brutal aspects of Bashir's regime wait for political reform to get justice? I agree and the ICC shouldn't be allowed to administer selective justice. I think the article is however insensitive to those who suffer in conflicts like Darfur, at the hands of the likes of Bashir, even if he's not solely to blame, in saying retribution should wait until their country has experienced sufficient political reform. As the head of state, accountability should start with him. I wonder if the author would feel the same if he'd been directly affected by the conflict. The ICC's execution is far from perfect but surely there must be a way to bring all war criminals to book, be it in the US or elsewhere, that takes into account the political sensibilities of the country involved.
I thought this was a very good essay on ; it is very encouraging to note that the African electorate gets the opportunity to consider the characters of the candidates for elected offices and that money and advertisements play far lesser roles. Thanks for this essay. I have already created a link to the essay in my blog: http://chielozona.blogspot.com/
is one of the most coherent and cogent analysis of the current global crisis, its impact on Africa and most important of all, the necessary African response. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us and particularly those of us who aspire to a leadership role in Africa must study this document very, very closely indeed!!! This is no less than a key component of the new econo-political architecture of a 'Liberated, Unified and Transformed Africa!!!
, and much of the world media, have misunderstood the Popes' teaching with regard to sexual education.The objection of the Pope to condoms is not that comdoms are "per se" unable to forestall HIV, but rather that the condom distribution and the mentality created by their use, namely that one can have sex at any time, anywhere, with anybody with impunity as far as sexual dsease is concerned, is a fallacy that valid statistics can abundantly show and prove. Besides, the Pope never proposed that abstinence only is the remedy for the HIV virus. There has to be proper sexual education in the much larger context of morality and spiritual values in understanding the function of sex in human beings.
Pambazuka News 425: Beware of human rights fundamentalism
Pambazuka News 425: Beware of human rights fundamentalism
Zambia is reckoned to be the 13th poorest country in the world. Sixty-four per cent of the people live in poverty. More than one in six children die before their fifth birthday, and if you live to the age of 42 you are doing better than average. Britain is the largest bilateral donor to Zambia, providing £40mn a year. But what Britain and the rest of the developed world provide may not be enough to stop an increase in children dying because of the global recession.
The Conflict, Security and Development Group (CSDG) at King’s College London together with the Africa Leadership Centre (ALC), in collaboration with the Commission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), is pleased to announce a call for applications for the MA Studentships and Mentoring Programme 2009-2010.
Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) aims to bring disparate views on and approaches to transitional justice into a single arena. In pursuit of this, we are proud to host, at the University of Oxford, an international conference, “Taking Stock of Transitional Justice,” which is designed to assemble vast knowledge on transitional justice from across geographical locations and areas of academic study and practice. Exploring established views and new thinking on transitional justice, OTJR would like to invite all interested parties to submit a presentation abstract or register for general participation.
The IFJ has called on the Senegalese Government to dialogue with media companies following the threat to close private radios and televisions stations for nonpayment of licenses fees. “This is a serious threat on jobs for journalists and on press freedom. Indeed, it is surprising that this decision was made on a Sunday, the day of election, when the provisional results were not favorable to the government” declared Mr. Gabriel Baglo, Director of IFJ Africa Office.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its near global ratification have been seen as true accomplishments in this sense. Yet, despite this recognition and success, the range and severity of problems faced by children at the start of the twenty-first century are persisting, if not increasing. The year 2009 marks the 20 th anniversary of the Convention. The occasion provides a timely opportunity to assess the value of the CRC in engaging with dilemmas on the ground, in devising multi-faceted approaches other than a purely legal or technical response, and in evolving to meet new challenges that emerge from its practical implementation.
Kwantlen Polytechnic University invites you to participate in the Kwame Nkrumah International Conference: August 19-21, 2010 at its beautiful Richmond campus in British Columbia, Canada. The Conference will commemorate the centenary of the birthday of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Africa’s Man of the Millennium, and bring scholars and students from Canada and from the around the world to share research and ideas on Africa’s place in the global community, and to discuss the life, achievements and shortcomings of Africa’s foremost Pan-Africanist.
At this session, this Council has heard about the tragic killing of three persons.
Edwin Legarda was shot to death on 16 December 2008 by members of the Colombian armed forces shortly after his wife, Aida Quilcué, had been active at the third session of the UPR Working Group in connection with its review of Colombia.
On 5 March 2009, Oscar Kingara and Paul Oulu were murdered - soon after meeting the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions during his mission to Kenya in February 2009.
Members directly engaged schools in Bulawayo on issues of education as part of an ongoing campaign to demand affordable education for all children. Community-based demonstrations were held at five schools in Bulawayo whilst representative groups met with school heads at another five schools to outline the concerns of parents. These activities will be duplicated across Bulawayo at other schools in coming days.
It is often said: “If you do not take care of politics, it will take care of you anyway”. Politics is in the public sphere because it is supposed to take care of defining, guiding and deciding the course of everyone’s life. Whereas women contribute to society, their input is not recognized. They cannot be in charge of their own destiny because gender is artificially relegated to the private domain. Assuring domestic labor, raising children and feeding everyone is done by women all over the world, but this essential contribution is taken for granted.
March 24, 2009 is Impunity Day in Kenya - the Human Rights Defenders Day. It was the 24th day of March in 1996, when Daniel arap Moi’s State assassinated our dear Karimi Nduthu. Karimi Nduthu had just finalized an investigative report into the state sponsored ethnic clashes of 1992 and 1993 which targeted targeting ethnic populations of the Gikuyu, Kisii, Luo and Luyha in Rift Valley, Nyanza, Western and Coast Provinces.
Tanzanian researchers will investigate whether mobile phone technology can be used to encourage safer sex among homosexual men. The project aims to give homosexual men information about HIV/AIDS via their mobile phone's short message service (SMS) in the dominant language, Kiswahili.
While shelters are bursting at the seams with children in need of care, bureaucracy, by children’s institutions, is hindering many homosexual parents from giving love to those who need it most. The present economic climate has, according to child adoption agencies, also seen a drop in the number of applicants wanting to adopt, as people are uncertain about the future.
Society's expectations and presentation of women make them more vulnerable to catching sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) and HIV, participants at Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAFAids) workshop heard last week. One of the facilitators, Lillian Chikara from SAFAids said there was need for women and girls to be empowered for them to make informed decisions when negotiating safe sex.
In South Africa, if you are poor your right to justice through the legal system is often denied. If you don't have money for lawyers its hard to get justice. Therefore, the law is for the rich because they have ample money to buy 'justice'. Landlords who have money can afford to try and evict people continuously by accessing the courts and paying the best lawyers to throw people out of their houses. In South Africa, communities don't have money to continuously go to court to fight for, what should be, their basic rights. In the legal system, you are discriminated against if you are poor.
Last week, a Sudanese refugee girl was sexually harassed in the street, while waiting for a taxi in the Al Haram district. A taxi driver pulled up and verbally and physically harassed her. When she accused him of verbally and physically harassing her, he drove his car towards and hit her with the car repeatedly. She attempted to desperately defend herself, but did not have time to do so. The taxi driver then grabbed her arm and hand and began moving the taxi.
We have received news from the African Union Legal Counsel’s office that the Democratic Republic of Congo deposited its instrument of ratification with the AU on 9th February 2009 although according to the status update attached DRC ratified the same on 9th June 2008 making the number of countries that have ratified the Protocol 27.
On April 27, 2009 the Ogoni people of Nigeria will finally have their chance at justice when the families of famed activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues, who were sentenced to death in a sham trial in Nigeria and hanged in 1995, will show that Royal Dutch Shell was at the very least complicit in their deaths and likely colluded with the Nigerian military to quell peaceful protests through murder, torture and destruction of villages. The plaintiffs’ attorneys will use a U.S. law on the books since 1789 called the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) that allows violations of international law to be tried in U.S. courts.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has partnered with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in Nairobi to unlock credit and financing for small-scale farmers and agribusinesses across sub-Saharan Africa. The organisation will expand AGRA's existing innovative financing projects to reach more countries and key stakeholders in the African agricultural value chain.
Alliance for Green Revolution for Africa's Vice President for Policy and Partnerships, called on African governments to commit to investing in agriculture. Speaking at a meeting hosted by UN Commission on Sustainable Development in Windhoek , Namibia , Dr Akinwumi Adesina, Dr Adesina warned, ‘the next food crisis must not catch the continent by surprise.’
Beninese President Boni Yayi met with Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun here Wednesday. Yayi said Benin and China have a deep-rooted friendship and the Beninese government and people thank China for its long-term aid. He said the Beninese government will continue to adhere to the one-China policy. Benin hopes to establish and develop a comprehensive partnership of cooperation with China, enlarge collaboration in the fields of infrastructure and social development, and enhance bilateral relations, Yayi said.
Chinese officials plan to open a malaria research center in the Cameroonian capital of Yaounde, Shen Yi, a Chinese embassy official, said recently ahead of an opening ceremony for the center, Xinhuanet reports. The center is expected to cost three million Chinese yuan, or about $440,000, Xinhuanet reports. China also plans to send four malaria experts to Cameroon for 50 days, Shen said. Shen added that China sends a team of malaria experts to Cameroon annually but that the team plans to work with a Cameroonian team this year to share China's experience in controlling the disease.
A Mozambican and South African consortium, Petroline Holdings, plans to start building a $620-million oil pipeline linking Johannesburg to the port of Maputo before the end of this year. Mateus Kathupa, CEO of state-run Mozambican company PETROMOC, which holds a 40% stake in the consortium, said on Thursday the construction of the petrol and diesel pipeline would take six months.
Four Chinese nationals have been caught red-handed while over-harvesting limpets worth N$21 680 in Walvis Bay around the Mola Mola and NamPort areas. According to the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Control Fisheries, Michael Koopman, the Chinese nationals tried to run away, but the fisheries inspectors eventually caught up with them and brought them in for questioning.
China’s so-called investments in Namibia bring very little, if any, skill and technology transfers, neither do such investments play a significant role in developing the country’s value addition and manufacturing base. This is according to a new report on Chinese Investments in Namibia. The report lays bare the murky Chinese investments and more importantly Government’s ineptitude to set strategic priorities on which to negotiate foreign direct investment
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Tuesday urged tougher prevention and punishment on corruption, saying "China faced the toughest year in its economic development since the turn of the century." Localities and departments should step up supervision over corruption, regulate the use of executive power, tackle persistent problems that harm public interest and accelerate construction of a system to prevent and punish corruption to provide a solid guarantee for reform, development and stability, Wen told a conference on clean governance.
Chinese and Guinean workers toil shoulder to shoulder on a sun-blasted construction site at this crumbling city's edge, building the latest symbol of an old and sturdy alliance: a $50 million, 50,000-seat stadium. This city is littered with such tokens of a friendship that first flowered when Guinea was an isolated and struggling socialist state in the late 1950s.
Democratic Republic of Congo will push ahead with a $9 billion Chinese mining and infrastructure package despite pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which believes the deal will add to Congo's debt mountain, a top government official said on Monday. Under the 2007 agreement, Congo will receive much-needed roads, railways, hospitals and schools while China secures billions of dollars worth of lucrative copper and cobalt reserves it needs to feed its export-driven economy.
In creating a $30 million trust fund to boost the food output of developing countries, China has cemented its role as a major global player in cooperation between developing countries, the United Nations agricultural agency said today. “This historic agreement underlines the importance of the role which China has come to play in the global arena today,” José Maria Sumpsi Assistant Director-General of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said after signing an agreement with the Chinese Vice-Minister for Agriculture.
When President Barack Obama comes to London next week, he will find one great power missing at the world's summit table: Europe. Five of the 20 leaders at the G20 meeting will be Europeans, representing France, Germany, Britain, Italy and the EU, but the whole will be less than the sum of its parts. There will be plenty of Europeans but no Europe.
China's top legislator Wu Bangguo on Monday pledged to work with Seychelles to push forward relations between the two countries and their parliaments. Wu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, made the remarks when meeting with Seychelles National Assembly Speaker Patrick Herminie.
More opportunities for Chinese investment into Africa are to open up soon, with the announcement that China is to bolster its China-Africa Development Fund by an additional US$2-billion. The state-run equity fund has already invested in 20 projects, totalling a massive $400-million, in Africa since it was established in June 2007.
Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) for a two-day visit during which he unveiled humanitarian aid to refugees in the central African country. Zhai and his Congolese counterpart Ignace Gata Mavita held talks before signing economic and trade agreements between the two countries, including 4 million RMB (about 600,000 U.S. dollars) in humanitarian aid to the refugees in the eastern part of the country.
President Isaias Afwerki has received and held talks at the Denden Hall with a delegation from the People's Republic of China (PRC) headed by Mr. Lu Quingcheng, Vice President of the China-Africa Development Fund. Briefing the delegation on the available wide-ranging investment opportunities in Eritrea in various sectors, the President pointed out that the Government has been giving top priority to the task of laying conducive ground for investment, and that encouraging accomplishments have been registered as regards putting in place the necessary infrastructure.
A delegation of the China Council for Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) arrived in Abidjan, the capital of Cote d'Ivoire, on Saturday for a three-day visit to follow up a blueprint set in 2006 between China and West African countries. The Chinese delegation headed by CCPIT Vice-Chairman Zhang Wei has been on a mission since March 14 to boost cooperation with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), according to a communiqué released by the regional bloc.