PAMBAZUKA NEWS 157: FROM BEIJING TO AFRICA - IMPLEMENTING THE BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 157: FROM BEIJING TO AFRICA - IMPLEMENTING THE BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION
Rebels and government forces may be talking peace in Sudan's civil war, but minority ethnic groups are still being attacked and more than a million people have been displaced, the UN's Ruud Lubbers said on Tuesday. Lubbers described the region's refugee crisis as a "humanitarian catastrophe" that is "one of the world's gravest emergencies". Government-sponsored Arab militias are conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing aimed at driving the non-Arab minorities out of the western Sudanese region of Darfur. On May 11 the Sudanese government and southern rebels told United States officials they agreed to the terms of a peace deal to end their long-running civil war, but a formal agreement has yet to be signed.
Indigenous peoples, an estimated 370 million living in more than 70 countries, maintain social, cultural, economic and political characteristics distinct from those of the dominant societies they live in. Although among the most resilient of peoples worldwide, systematic marginalization throughout history has made them arguably one of the poorest and most vulnerable groups of people today. Many are victims of racial discrimination, social exclusion and rapid economic development without their consent. They have been denied their land rights, and deprived of access to basic needs like education and healthcare. When combined with other forms of discrimination, such as those based on race or ethnicity, the effects of gender discrimination can multiply, posing serious challenges to women's enjoyment of their basic human rights, says a UNIFEM briefing, 'Securing Indigenous Women’s Rights and Participation'.
Women were, once again, winners in the Local Authority elections: their representation has increased by some two per cent - excluding the Grootfontein results. An initial study of the results revealed that women gained 123 seats of 283 countrywide - up to 43,4 per cent from 41,3 per cent during the last elections. Of the 123 seats for women, Swapo won 78 for its candidates, the DTA 18, Congress of Democrats 14 (their Lüderitz candidate excluded), UDF nine, National Unity Democratic Organisation (Nudo) three and the Civic Association of Henties Bay one.
Women have formed a coalition to build and maintain a non-partisan initiative during and after the transition to multipartyism. They resolved to demand 40 to 50 percent representation in Cabinet and at all national levels. However, they ranked aspiration for presidency as the least priority among the nine major areas of concern they identified at the end of a three-day national women's conference. "We have decided to move forward, no turning back, no turning back," they chorused at the end of the conference.
Hate crimes against lesbians are on the increase, mainly in areas such as Soweto and Alexandra, the chief executive officer of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women has said. Speaking at the ninth international conference of the South African Association of Marital and Family Therapy at the International Convention Centre on Tuesday, Donna Smith said the hate crimes ranged from murder, assault and abduction to rape and other humiliating forms of sexual abuse.
With young people in Zimbabwe most at risk from HIV/AIDS, a new project is seeking to empower youth representatives to make a difference among their peers. The District Response Initiative (DRI), which works to reduce the effects of HIV/AIDS on rural youth in seven of the country's most impoverished districts, is already using trained peer educators to encourage HIV/AIDS awareness at youth-friendly clubs and centres. Now the DRI has drafted youth office-bearers - teenagers appointed as young parliamentarians, governors and councillors by the ministry of youth - into the cause.
A year from now, according to Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the minister of health, South Africans should be paying nearly 33 percent less, on average, for generic and brand-name products. But dispensing doctors, whose revenue will drop by an estimated R503-million once the new medicine pricing regulations are in place, are likely to increase their consultation fees to compensate for their losses. Hospitals too, whose biggest cash cows are medicines, could increase theatre costs to reduce their losses.
If U.S. President George W. Bush is expecting bouquets from AIDS activists for his proposal to expedite approvals for life-saving anti-retroviral drugs by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), he is in for a disappointment. Africa and AIDS activists are assailing the proposal not only as a new attempt to delay the delivery of desperately needed, low-cost generic drugs to needy AIDS victims in Africa and the Caribbean, but also as an effort to undermine the World Health Organisation's (WHO) own expedited approval process which has already authorized the use of generics by the World Bank, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Meningitis has killed more than 800 people in the impoverished West African country of Burkina Faso since the start of the year, health officials said on Monday, double the death toll given two months ago. Like its neighbours in Africa's "meningitis belt" stretching from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east, the landlocked country is often struck by outbreaks of the disease in the early months of the year.
The 57th conference of the World Health Assembly (WHA) opened at the Palais des Nations here on Monday. The WHA is the supreme decision-making body of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which has a total of 192 members. The conference is scheduled to end on Saturday. Key issues including HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, road safety, a proposed strategy on diet, and physical activity and health will top the agenda of the conference.
An apparent decline in the number of circumcision operations carried out on young women in Burkina Faso masks a growing trend to circumcise younger and younger girls, according to a new survey by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Burkina based National Committee Against the Practice of Circumcision (CNLPE).
The Swaziland Vulnerability Assessment Committee (VAC) predicts that the high HIV/AIDS prevalence rate will lower life expectancy to just 40 years by 2010. The first large-scale survey of Swazi homes to determine the impact of HIV/AIDS found a reversal of the decade-long trend of lower mortality rates, due to the pandemic. "Swaziland has entered uncharted territory", concluded the VAC's findings for 2003, released this week. Food aid was the main source of nutrition for rural residents in three of Swaziland's four regions, where drought has ruined harvests for the past three years.
Zimbabwe, where more than five million people face famine, claimed this week that it had enough food to feed its population and would not seek aid supplies this year. The claim was dismissed as ridiculous by agricultural experts and aid workers who said it was an attempt by the regime to secure full control over food supplies before next year's parliamentary elections.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has defined improvement of basic education programmes as a priority in order to give access to education for all in Africa. This pronouncement was made on Tuesday, the last day of a meeting of the UNESCO general director for Africa with the continent's National Commissions for UNESCO, that gathered about 200 participants in Maputo. UNESCO is also pledging to assist in assuring water supply, the promotion of human rights, of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue, and promoting communications at community level.
Naledi Pandor, the education minister, says gender inequality in education should be addressed as a matter of urgency. Pandor was speaking at a gender equity conference in Gordons Bay, near Cape Town. She said there were disparities in the provision of education and the appointment of female managers within the education department in the country.
An International Monetary Fund (IMF) review of Mozambique's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and economic and social plan for 2003 says the country is well placed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are a set of objectives for human development, to be met by 2015, agreed to by the 147 countries that are signatories to the Millennium Declaration of September 2000.
Asian and North African countries could be polio-free within months, while west and central African countries must change track to stop the virus, according to data presented in Geneva by Health Ministers from the world's six remaining polio-endemic countries. The ministers announced a two-pronged strategy to further accelerate eradication activities in both areas.
"When I was little my mother didn't have a job, so my uncle took me in and sent me to school, but before my second grade he died. I was then passed on to my mother’s sister. But my auntie couldn't afford to send me and her own children to school so I stayed home and did the housework. Not long after I had moved in, auntie got very sick and died. It was too much for me to bear. My mom decided to have me live with her because no one else would. I didn’t know my father, but my mother told me he died a long time ago." Frida is an orphan living at the Anglican Children's Project, Lusaka, Zambia. This is her story.
The University of Zambia Students Union (UNZASU) has warned management and lecturers to resolve their differences. UNZA management and lecturers were scheduled to meet and resolve their differences over improved conditions of service. UNZASU publicity and information secretary Brian Kashimu said that failure by the two parties to reach an agreement would lead to the institution being declared a no-go area for them.
About 2000 teachers poured onto the streets of Tema on Monday this week to demonstrate their disapproval against the Social Security Pension Scheme, which is currently being operated for teachers in the country. According to the teachers, the continuous use of the scheme for teachers clearly shows that the government had refused to recognize the enormous contribution of teachers to the socio-economic development of the country.
The South African Aids Vaccine Initiative (Saavi) has confirmed that Impala Platinum Holdings has committed R2,5mn over five years while Transnet donated R1,5mn towards their HIV/Aids vaccine research, reports the Mail and Guardian. Saavi, indicating that the funds will be used to cover research to develop new test vaccines and run clinical tests, welcomed the funding and encouraged more support and partnerships of this nature.
The 24th International Fundraising Congress (IFC), a leading conference for fundraising professionals, takes place from the 12-15 October 2004 at the NH Leeuwenhorst Hotel in the Netherlands. The conference programme includes all aspects of fundraising such as research, strategy and communications. The sessions consist of workshops, panels, plenaries, mini-courses and advanced classes.
Intelligent Management Strategies (IMS) extends an invitation to attend an International Conference on Corporate Citizenship and Social Responsibility to be held at the Inter-Continental Sandton Sun and Towers, Sandton, Johannesburg.
The event is entitled "Transform our Communities."
Topics for discussion include:
- Economic development and upliftment;
- Structuring investment;
- Making Corporate Social Investment (CSI) an invested interest; and
- Legal and empowerment issues around CSI.
Economic analysts have hailed the launching of the JSE's Socially Responsible Investment Index, saying it will bring about an exciting era of corporate responsibility. The index will rate companies on how their operations will affect the country socio-economically and environmentally. Sean de Cleene, a director of the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship, says the index will demand that companies adopt a more holistic and integrated approach to sustainable development.
Information should be seen as a global public good. In today’s society, access to information means access to development. But information is increasingly treated as a commodity, providing unfair advantage to those with means to access it, and excluding those who don’t. The digital divide is more than a matter of infrastructure, and will not necessarily be overcome simply through technology. The public sector has a responsibility to ensure that fair access is promoted.
Innovation Network's Workstation 2.0 is an online evaluation tool for social change organisations seeking to answer, "What difference are we making?" Nonprofits and funders have used Workstation 2.0 to measure their results, make informed decisions, and create lasting change. Workstation 2.0 consists of three components: 1) Organisational Assessment Tool; 2) Logic Model Builder; and 3) Evaluation Plan Builder. The tool is available at no cost.
Kenya recently held a national ICT convention aimed at bringing together a wide group of stakeholders to discuss Kenya's information and communications technology (ICT) policy and most importantly work towards an implementation strategy. The convention was organised by the Kenya ICT Federation (KIF), a body incorporating many private sector organisations involved in the sector such the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) and the Kenya ICT Board that was recently formed to try and incorporate all the main actors including civil society organisations.
The Community Information Network for Southern Africa (CINSA) is a project supporting community ICT initiatives in the SADC region. The aim is to build a sustainable network of community ICT projects in the 14 SADC member states - Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. CINSA supports community ICT initiatives, including telecentres, community multimedia centres, community radio stations, community information resource and access centres and the like. Its mandate is to serve those initiatives located within the SADC region through research, networking, facilitating training, service brokerage and more.
Billions of people in the world's poorest countries are held captive by debts that can never be repaid. Year after year their governments struggle to pay back millions of pounds - with little hope of ever clearing their debts. Some improvements in debt relief have occurred in the last few years, with small but worthwhile benefits to the poor. Although welcome, these do not go nearly far enough. Too little money is still being offered to too few countries. At best, the improved Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) offers only half of what's needed. Visit the debt campaign page of the World Development Movement to find out more.
The Collage Network, an online Cultural Directory that promotes the work of Sudanese refugee artists living in Cairo, has been launched. The first of its kind, The Collage Network seeks to unite the Sudanese community through participation in the arts. The site features an online gallery, artists profiles, video and audio downloads, information on workshops, performance groups and an online booking form that makes engaging Sudanese culture for special events easy and accessible.
The African Socialist International (ASI) is the result of political conclusions reached by the African People’s Socialist Party that African people worldwide - from South Africa to the Congo, the UK to the U.S. and throughout the Caribbean and South America - must be united into a singular revolutionary organisation that can speak to the aspirations of the African masses that suffer at the hands of imperialist white power and neo-colonialism.
Surprising as it may be for many of us who remember the picture, face and voice of a very young man, the late El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known to us as Malcolm X, would have been 79 on May 19, 2004. As years went by, Malcolm was all but expunged from US history, particularly after the decimation and annihilation of many of the Black radical groups that attempted to uphold his views. It was only in the 1980s that a reawakening took place, largely among African-American youth, where Malcolm was reintroduced not only to African Americans, but as well to the larger society.
The deputy minister of information, Mr. Stephen Asamaoh -Boateng has said the government has worked towards greater constitutional recognition to Ghanaians in the Diaspora so they can take part in the process of electing the government of their country. He added that some diplomatic missions had initiated various innovative programmes to assist and facilitate the mobilization of resources from Ghanaians living in other countries to support development programmes in Ghana.
The number of Burundian refugees living in camps in western Tanzania has fallen to a six-year low, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday from Geneva. UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said more than 40,000 refugees had returned to Burundi since the beginning of the year, bringing the number of those remaining in the camps to less than 300,000. He said UNHCR convoys carried most of the refugees who returned this year through two major border crossings in Burundi's eastern province of Ruyigi.
Amnesty International has called on donor nations to provide adequately for the needs of an estimated 21,000 former child soldiers who are currently being disarmed in Liberia. The international group released a report on child soldiers in Liberia on Monday as the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child opened its thirty-sixth session. "The children of Liberia have been killed, made orphans, maimed, abducted, deprived of education and health care - and recruited and used as child soldiers," Amnesty said in a statement accompanying the release of its report.
Assessing whether or not aid agencies are making a difference in developing countries and whether or not they are well organised in order to achieve this is difficult to answer because of the special nature of development business, organisational and functional differences within the aid community, and lack of terminological consistency. In response, DFID has developed a multilateral effectiveness framework (MEFF), which aims to be evidence-based, objective and to draw primarily on multilaterals’ own information sources. It will take into account differences in the mandates and organisational set-up of each organisation.
This paper summarises from Save the Children UK's experience in facilitating children and young people’s participation in PRSP processes, highlighting in particular the experiences of Vietnam and Honduras, and drawing on insights from Lesotho, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the work of a Guyanese NGO. It discusses the effectiveness of a range of approaches, highlights challenges, outlines learning points and raises questions about the impact and cost-benefit trade-off of children and young people’s participation in PRSPs.
Some 200 Angolan refugees began the journey home on Tuesday from Namibia, the first of some 10,000 displaced who are to return in the coming months, UN officials said. The Angolans will cross the border on Thursday to return home to the southern province of Cunene, UNHCR official Esegiel Xamseb told AFP by phone from the Osire refugee camp, north of Windhoek. Some 90,000 refugees from countries neighboring Angola are to return home in May and June as part of a second wave of repatriations organised by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Angolan authorities.
London's Metropolitan Police said they will create a special protection team to monitor the entry of unaccompanied children into Britain following the release of an official report Monday that found a number of youngsters who arrived alone are missing from official registers. Child welfare groups, including UNICEF, called for more concerted national action from the government to prevent the abuse of minors who are smuggled into the country. The 'Paladin Child' report monitored the arrival of minors at London's Heathrow Airport, the country's busiest entry port, between August and November last year.
The May 2004 issue of Forced Migration Review, on refugee and IDP
livelihoods, has just been published. As the number of uprooted people
in the world continues to rise, the international community faces
mounting challenges on how best to assist refugees in need.
Understanding people’s livelihood strategies is a prerequisite to
assisting them. The articles in FMR 20 discuss the issues at stake,
examine agency strategies and refugees’ experiences, and present lessons
learned and examples of good practice.
The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Retired General Olushegun Obasanjo, has declared a state of emergency in Plateau State, one of Nigeria's 36 states. The Governor of the state and the parliament have been suspended from office and replaced by an Army General. Plateau, in the middle Belt region of the country, has been the centre of sectarian massacres between different ethnic and religious communities since 2001. The North Western state of Kano, Nigeria's second commercial city, has also seen ethnic and religious massacres recently, allegedly as a 'revenge' for the killings in Jos. Both states are not alone in the spate of killings that has gripped Nigeria in the past few years.
As to be expected the State of Emergency measure has been criticized by many people. Human rights groups decry it as a descent into dictatorship and a threat to the already faltering democratisation in the country. Some critics including the Christian Association of Nigeria have criticized it as discriminatory against Christians who are the majority in the state while a similar measure was not directed at Kano state where the majority of the population is Muslim. Still others see a majority and minority dimension in it. Plateau state is not one of the core states of the tripodal majority groups (Hausa -Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo) in the country therefore the president, himself part of the majority, feels he can get away with it whereas he dares not introduce similar measures in Kano.
The problem with conspiracy theories is that while it may be easy to be dismissive of them rationally and intellectually, the mix of fact, prejudice and beliefs make for serious political dangers in a very polarized society like Nigeria.
The principle of fairness should have demanded that the President imposes a state of emergency on both Plateau and Kano State. And if for any reason it is not possible in one then that extreme measure should never have been considered for one of the two states for similar crimes. There is no way in which the government can now escape criticisms of both intimidation in one case and timidity in the other.
However I can hazard guesses why the President took the steps he took in Plateau state. One, it is a state controlled by his party, the PDP, therefore he could not be accused of partisanship, whereas Kano state is controlled by the main opposition party, the ANPP.
Two, Plateau is a state with majority Christian population and since he is a Christian, a born again one for that matter, no one will accuse him of being anti-Christian. A third reason and a more personal one must be his anger. The president is known to take things personally and be slow to forgiveness for conduct he considers a personal affront to his leadership.
Therefore, the widely reported altercation he had with religious leaders in Jos when he visited the scene of the massacres during which he called one of them 'idiot' may have contributed to his determination 'to teach them a lesson'. Four, the president may have decided that in going for Plateu, seemingly the weakest link in the chain of shame in the governance of Nigeria, he could teach other states a lesson that enough was enough. Plateu's Governorbseemed to have lost the popular confidence of the people and elite of the state and was recently at the centre of criminal investigations by the British Police over money laundering allegations.
All of these would be the wrong reasons for taking the extraordinary step of suspending all elective institutions. If that happens at the federal level it would amount to a successful coup and an end to civilian rule. A democratic society must find other ways of dealing with threats to national security instead of resorting to the Army. It is a fire brigade approach that does not address the fundamental basis of the conflicts. Those who are saluting the 'courage' of the president, in taking this step, including many who have been his worst critics, would sing different tunes if the state of emergency had been declared in their own states or states controlled by parties they are sympathetic towards. Justice and the rule of law must be blind and should apply to all equally. This state of emergency may not strengthen the rule of law because its politics undermines the process of justice and democracy.
Now that this bad precedent has been set does that mean that the next state where such conflicts take place will also be placed under state of emergency? Lagos , Kaduna, Anabra, Imo and the whole of the Delta region continue to be ravaged by communal violence - does that mean a state of emergency will apply in all of these states now?
There are many sources for the intermittent communal, religious and other sectarian conflicts across the country. An obvious one is the extreme poverty that the majority of the preponderantly youth population live in. It has made available a ready-made army of militias to be deployed at the whim and caprice of any patron. But more importantly the irresponsibility of the government through its security and other law and order agencies to bring perpetrators to justice, respect the rule of law and compensate victims has created a culture of impunity. Because the government is failing in this basic function of protecting all the citizens and residents of the country people are taking the law into their hands and putting their faith in sectarian militias. So instead of declaring a state of emergency the president should stop residing in Aso Rock and start presiding over the peace and security of the country.
The government alone does not and should not carry the blame. The various religious and community leaders must also assume their responsibility of being frank even at the risk of personal safety to ask their followers to stop 'killing in the name of God'. There is no faith whose God wants to be worshipped in the grave yard. The media must also stop justifying unlawful killing of fellow citizens as 'revenge'. ([email protected]; [email protected])
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.
* Send your comments to [email protected]
The year 2005 marks the 10th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing, China, in 1995, and processes to review the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) are gaining momentum. Recently, a southern African intergovernmental Sub-Regional Meeting for the decade review of the BPFA was held in Lusaka, Zambia, from 26 to 28 April 2004 under the auspices of the southern Africa Office of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in collaboration with the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Prior to the sub-regional review meeting, representatives of women's human rights, women's empowerment and gender and development non-governmental organisations from eleven countries met in Lusaka, Zambia on 25 April 2004, at a special session devoted specifically to reviewing the achievements, challenges and opportunities in the implementation of BPFA. The objective of the working session, which was convened by the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC), Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness programme (WIDSAA) in collaboration with the Non Governmental Organisation Coordinating Council (NGOCC) in Zambia, was to consolidate civil society input to the intergovernmental decade review meeting.
The NGO meeting achieved their objective by producing a communiqué, which was presented to the sub-regional intergovernmental decade review meeting. The communiqué outlined constraints and challenges encountered in implementing the 12 critical areas outlined in BPFA.
While acknowledging the region's progresses, the Gender NGOs expressed deep concern about the rapid spread of HIV infection in the SADC countries and the millions of deaths caused by AIDS, which they described as a testimony to the continued unequal power relations between women and men.
The communiqué highlighted several constrains and challenges hampering the implementation of the 12 critical areas of concern outlined in the BPFA as obstacles to the advancement of women and gender equality. Key among the constraints is the failure to operationalise established gender equality frameworks and implement national and regional policies. A majority of countries in the regional have adopted national gender policies and developed attractive strategic plans for their implementations, but these have remained unimplemented. Reasons include a lack of financial and human resources.
The established mechanisms for the advancement of women have also been less productive due to unclear mandates, understaffing and limited skills in gender mainstreaming. Only a few experts have the requisite gender competencies and awareness on gender equality instruments to implement policies and assist in mainstreaming of gender.
Another major concern expressed was the misconception surrounding gender mainstreaming, which was reported to be hindering the promotion of gender equality.
To clear the current misunderstanding of the concept of gender mainstreaming, the NGOs in their communiqué called for a strong review of 'gender mainstreaming' at the continental, regional, national and civil society levels within countries and for the development of approaches that result in transformation, rather than mere reform, of the patriarchal structures.
“Gender mainstreaming has been simplistically defined as the social roles of women and men without any analysis of the unequal power relations within structures, which hinder women's effective participation. This interpretation of the approach has led to situations where gender mainstreaming is viewed as the sole responsibility of women, and it is seen as a 'favour', rather than as a strategic means to bring about gender justice and equality.
“We note with grave concern the misconceptions that have arisen around 'gender mainstreaming' as the identified approach to give women equal access to opportunities in all sectors. Some governments have interpreted the approach to mean mainstreaming 'traditional gender roles' whereby women are still unable to break through the 'glass ceilings' into decision-making positions,” read part of the communiqué.
Gender experts define gender mainstreaming as the (re) organisation, improvement, development and evaluation of policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies at all levels and at all stages, by the actors normally involved in policy-making.
Gender mainstreaming means that gender equality is part of common policies and thus it (gender mainstreaming) implies a broader and more comprehensive definition of gender equality, giving value to differences and diversity. In stressing the need to (re) organise, improve, develop and evaluate policy processes, gender mainstreaming must be able to challenge the male bias that characterises society and the structural character of gender inequality. Mainstreaming must involve more and new actors in building a balanced society.
Concern about the the lack of gender specific job descriptions, and the limited knowledge on gender issues, was also expressed. This was coupled with low working morale that defeated the good intention behind established gender focal points in the ministries in most SADC countries. Personnel at these focus points are usually overburdened by other responsibilities, and in some cases lack gender-mainstreaming skills, thereby rendering them unable to influence policy changes in their respective sectors. These problems are compounded by the high turnover of gender specialists.
Recommendations regarding the other priority areas of concern in the BPFA were as follows:
* In order to effectively reduce the prevalence of HIV and AIDS, governments must make gender equality central to all strategies, polices and programmes.
* Declining economies and poverty remain big challenges for the region. It was recommended that by December 2006, women form no less than 50% of all bodies that make decisions on economic policy; and enact laws that guarantee that women form no less than 50 percent of the beneficiaries of land redistribution schemes and have access to and control over ownership of land in their own right.
* Recognising the high maternal mortality rates in the sub-region, provision of quality reproductive health services is paramount. It is recommended that user fees for all women including pregnant girls seeking health services be removed; that a broad range of female controlled protective devices such as microbicides and condoms be provided as contraception and protection from HIV and STIs and legislative reforming permitting access to safe and affordable delivery and abortion be effected.
* On gender violence, it was recommended that all SADC countries provide post sexual violence medical therapies for women and girls and especially those therapies that prevent and reduce the transmission of HIV and STIs; all countries enact legislation that criminalizes domestic violence and sexual offences committed in both the public and private spheres; all SADC countries ensure that they make and protect budgetary provisions for implementing measures to protect women and girls from violence; that governments enact stiffer penalties for all forms of sexual violence against the girl-child including trafficking, and protect girls from child labour.
* On women in decision-making positions, it was recommended that governments adopt measures within the framework of the elections which are unfolding in the region over the next 18 months, to fulfil the commitment of reaching the target of a minimum of 30 percent women in strategic political and decision making positions by December 2005; domesticate all regional and international instruments that are legally binding, and transform declarations into Protocols; and amend all constraints urgently to eliminate the provisions that currently exist for the discrimination of women and girls through customary and personal law.
* While recognising the growing acceptance of women's participation in decision-making, the NGOs recommended that governments make a concerted effort to: meet the African Union's target of 50% women in managerial and decision-making positions in all parastatals, public institutions, regional bodies, media institutions, the judiciary, the public service and trade unions; and enact special measures to increase women's participation in structures and policy-making processes at all levels.
* On women in the media, government and media were recommended to set targets for the advancement of women in the media; and set up an independent regulatory media authority to monitor the implementation of these targets. The media were also urged to develop editorial and employment policies which prohibit discrimination against women in the workplace, and ensure their promotion to key positions.
Lastly, Southern Africa - and the African continent - must begin to operate on a new gear, which ensures that all commitments agreed upon, including protocols and declarations signed, are adhered to. As the continent prepares for the African Union meeting in July, governments and heads of states that have not signed, ratified or acceded to the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa must do so.
Few countries have so far signed, ratified or acceded to the Protocol, which holds lots of opportunities to squarely address a number of interconnected issues on violence against women, based on African women's experiences. The Protocol is crucial for enacting gender sensitive legislation that is rooted in local experience and responds concisely to women's lived realities.
* Barbara Lopi is Project Manager/Editor the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre, Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness (SARDC WIDSAA) programme.
* Please send comments to
* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.
EQUALITY NOW BEIJING +10 CAMPAIGN
Equality Now, which works for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world, recently launched a global Beijing + 10 campaign for the repeal of discriminatory laws with respect to the commitments made in the Beijing Platform for Action.
To highlight the gap between women’s realities in countries around the world and the commitments made by governments ten years ago, Equality Now has issued 'Words and Deeds: Holding Governments Accountable in the Beijing+10 Review Process' The report highlights a representative sampling of discriminatory laws in countries around the world and calls on their governments to rescind these laws in accordance with the commitment made in the Beijing Platform for Action. A number of African countries' laws (Algeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania) are included in the report, which is available at the website: www.equalitynow.org
Malawi marks a decade of multi-party democracy with general elections on Thursday, which analysts warn are not only too close to call but, if mismanaged, could spark unrest. The seven-party opposition Mgwirizano (Unity) coalition, led by veteran politician Gwanda Chakuamba, is running the ruling United Democratic Front's (UDF) Bingu wa Mutharika a close race, but attention has also focused on the capacity and independence of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC).
* Profiles of the candidates
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=41154
The 70 suspected mercenaries arrested in Zimbabwe on charges of conspiring to topple the president of Equatorial Guinea are taking the South African government to court, a lawyer told IRIN on Wednesday. "We have filed an application at the Pretoria High Court following the failure of the office of the [South African] president [Thabo Mbeki] to respond to our request, sent to him on Monday, to either extradite the men to South Africa or ensure they are not handed over to the authorities in Equatorial Guinea," lawyer Alwyn Griebenow said.
More than 20 Christian villagers have been killed in a fresh outbreak of religious violence in Plateau State in central Nigeria, where President Olusegun Obasanjo imposed a state of emergency earlier this week, residents in the area told IRIN. Armed Muslims attacked five Christian villages on Tuesday near the town of Yelwa on Tuesday morning, they said.
Arms dealer Viktor Bout was the merchant of death wanted for feeding conflicts in Africa - until Iraq happened. Today the United States and Britain are using his extensive mercenary services in Iraq. The condemnation of his role in the diamond wars and other conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa over the past ten years is being silently erased. The Tajikstan-born Bout would be an embarrassing ally to acknowledge publicly. But the coalition partners are showing him exceptional favours as he does some of their job for them. The UN Security Council drafted a resolution in March to freeze the assets of mercenaries and weapons dealers who backed ousted Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. Bout should top that list, French diplomatic sources say. But the diplomats and UN sources say the United States has been working to keep Bout off that list.
A young East African University friend of mine, who in response to my suggestion that he ought to be more gender sensitive, just boasted: “I was born and raised to be an African 'man' so I will remain as such, why change a cultural habit of a lifetime?” I was stunned. His response was a clear indication that a significant number of men, boys and even women of African descent still think gender is a female preserve that they have little to do with. This can be partly attributed to the forces of masculinity, a socially force-fed emotional and physical masquerade which often thrives due to 'cultural' and 'biological' influences that make it necessary for men to assume certain roles but not others.
At the 48th session of the Commission for the Status of Women in New York a key topic of discussion was indeed the role of men and boys in gender equality. Despite this, the tireless efforts of inter-governmental initiatives to adopt UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security as far back as October 2000 have only just begun to emerge in practice. So how effective can an initiative to bring men and boys aboard the gender agenda be at translating complex policy into practice? And why is the role of men and boys in gender equality so crucial to peace and security?
Even at the cusp of a new millennium it is mostly men who wield political power at the national, regional and international policy-making level. This is certainly the case within post-conflict nations such as Eritrea where a considerable female frontline combatant and civilian population is now disproportionately represented within government. This hinders women's ability to engage in situations of ensuing, fully fledged and easing conflict.
The United Nations system itself epitomizes a male-dominated structure where men still occupy many high-level posts. So it becomes imperative to train and to gender -sensitize divisions such as the Department for Peacekeeping Operations on issues relating to peace and security before they embark on field missions.
There are still men and women within African civil society who remain oblivious to the existence of policies on gender, peace and security, which could change gender relations between and among men and women. Aside from this, putting early socialization and education at the grassroots level into practice could make a poignant impact, enabling men and boys to engender peace and security and not to threaten it. It is solely by doing this that African civil society can begin to deconstruct the flawed inter-cultural link between wars and masculinities.
Some questions still remain. How much of an effect has and will such practices have at the grassroots level and is there a sufficient amount of advocacy, training and capacity -building available to facilitate the inclusion of men and boys in this process?
Nowhere is such a question more appropriate than in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some of Africa's most horrific scenes of post-conflict gender based violence have occurred. People now refer to the persistence of such violence particularly in Bukavu and South Kivu, as the 'war within a war'. What is devastating is that that judicial, government and civilian attitudes within these areas are still locked in a belief that such grotesque acts of inhumanity form a part of traditional male practice. The ramifications are often detrimental to society and the economy, causing a dearth in income, forced migration, community level trauma, mistrust and a collapse in rural and urban kinship structures.
Although local NGO's have the capacity to identify and to overcome the impact of gender based violence on women, there doesn't appear to be a great deal done to sensitize male perpetrators, the military and judicial officials towards gender aware post-conflict reconstruction methods.
So in both policy and practice the role of gender in peace and security matters within Africa becomes increasingly important. The extent to which it is understood and implemented at both levels remains fraught. It is inevitably only the joint desire of men and women to create a culture of peace and gender equality within their communities that could sensitize civil society and governments towards such a goal.
We must not and indeed cannot speak of the importance of gender in peace and security without acknowledging that men and boys must be a part of its construction. Gender equality without men and boys is in fact like a skeleton without a spine. Socializing and educating the very men and boys who pose as our fathers, brothers, sons and friends could help demystify the cultural myths binding war and masculinity. This would then reduce the threat of further violence during armed conflict immensely, enabling men and boys to play a pivotal role in fostering peace and security and disabling their desire to violate the human rights of women and children whose lives are made difficult by the uncertainty of ferocious armed conflicts.
* Mebrak Tareke works for International Alert.
* Please send comments to
* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.
* Comment and Analysis: The role of men and boys in gender equality
* Pan-African Postcard: Nigerian state of emergency a bad precedent
* Conflicts and Emergencies: Victor Bout, Africa arms dealer, resurfaces in Iraq
* Human Rights:Zimbabwe: Food must not be used as a political tool, says Amnesty
* Women and Gender: Coming out in Africa
* Elections and Governance: Special IRIN report on the Malawi elections
* Development: Zambia condemned to debt
* HIV/AIDS: Aids groups blast Bush plan
* Social Welfare: Zambia: Frida’s story
* Jobs: Pambazuka seeks volunteer
Pambazuka News 156: World Debt Day: who owes whom?
Pambazuka News 156: World Debt Day: who owes whom?
If current efforts to combat the effects of HIV/AIDS are not stepped up, Nigeria's economy will shrink by 20 percent, an expert has warned. Health economist Dr. Reginald Chima made the submission at a session on the socio-economic impact of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria during the ongoing 4th National conference on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. After two decades of HIV devastation, Nigeria's economy will have lost 20 percent of her gross domestic product, he said.
Sudan's government is guilty of "ethnic cleansing" and crimes against humanity, charges a new report released Friday by Human Rights Watch that accuses government-backed Arab militias of systematic attacks on black Sudanese peasants and government forces of starving black Sudanese to death in concentration camps. Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution to permit the safe return of more than one million people forced from their homes in the Darfur region of the country and to demand that Khartoum immediately disarm, disband, and withdraw the Arab militias with which government forces have carried out ethnic cleansing.
The world's least developed nations say they're prepared to make concessions to revive global trade talks. After a two-day meeting in Senegal, the poorer nations welcomed recent concessions from both the US and Europe. They pledged to be more flexible in trade negotiations, particularly on the issues of cotton and farm subsidies, which led to a deadlock at the WTO summit in Cancun last September. In this interview with Radio Netherlands, Louk de la Rive Box, professor of international co-operation at Maastricht University, explains why there's a new mood of compromise.
An impending global food crisis is threatening to destabilize national economies and create a "politics of food scarcity" in 2005, as grain stocks dwindle to their lowest level in 30 years due to neglected environmental factors that are crippling harvests, Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown has said. The situation in 2004 is beginning to look a lot like 1974, but for different reasons, Brown said. Spreading deserts, falling water tables and crop-wilting temperatures are shrinking harvests in key producing countries, he said.
As recently as 10 years ago, the words "environment," "recycling," and "waste" were rarely heard in the east African country of Kenya. But today, many Kenyans - especially young people - eagerly pitch in to recycle waste, protect the environment, and improve the daily lives of their people. One of the forces behind this change is a young man named Vincent Ogutu.
An independent inspection of accounting practices used to log Angola's oil revenue made recommendations on how to increase transparency, but officials said they had not yet decided whether to implement the proposals. The government published last Wednesday a summary of the report it requested from KPMG after accusations from rights groups that high-level corruption led to the disappearance of billions of dollars from the oil industry.
Fresh cracks have emerged in the ruling coalition over the fight against corruption, even as the government reiterated its commitment to fight the vice, no matter the price. The government sent a powerful message that it was prepared to pay any price to fight corruption within its ranks. But even as it was doing so, it also emerged that corruption is likely to become the new battlefield between wrangling factions of the ruling coalition.
Benin is moving to protect pregnant women and small children from malaria with insecticide-treated bed nets with funds from the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis distributed by UNDP. The initiative will help Benin's progress towards achieving Goal 6 of the Millennium Development Goals, which calls for reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.
Impoverished child refugees in Gambia are turning to prostitution with European visitors, compounding the West African country's sex-tourism problem, according to a U.N. children's fund report issued on Wednesday. Experts from UNICEF, which issued the report on sex abuse in Gambia, said they were concerned the country is increasingly a destination for sex tourists as countries in south-east Asia take steps to shake off their image as havens for paedophiles.
This year's spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF marked 60 years of their founding in 1944. Fasts in Pakistan and outside the World Bank in DC and a protest rally were some of the actions taken by global justice campaigners to press on issues including debt cancellation. The official meetings remain closed with proceedings undisclosed save for the final communique and press releases. The main issues around which discussions took place included macroeconomic and structural policy measures for economic recovery and growth, IMF surveillance, a debt sustainability framework for low-income countries and progress in providing debt relief under the enhanced HIPC Initiative, a review of progress towards the MDGs, development financing and the strengthening of the voice and participation of developing and transition countries in the work and decision making of the Bretton Woods institutions.
Inter-party violence prevailed throughout the campaign period for the Zengeza by-election held from 27-28 March 2004, says a report from the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. Seventy-five percent of the politically motivated assaults that were perpetrated in March 2004 occurred in Zengeza constituency during the campaign period. Incidents of assault have been indiscriminate with several reports of assaults of elderly persons over the age of 60. Three pregnant women were reportedly assaulted in March 2004.
"It was difficult to tell people that I was HIV positive because there wasn't much support," says Gladys, a teacher in her 40s. Even though a million people have died of AIDS in Uganda, and a million more are infected with the virus, attitudes towards the disease haven't changed much in this Central African country in the past two and a half decades. When the AIDS epidemic began in the early 1980s one of the hardest hit countries was Uganda. By the early 1990s, over 18 percent of the population was infected with HIV, and in some areas, the figure was over 30 percent. But Uganda is one of the few countries in Africa that has managed to turn the tide, thanks to the government's openness about the disease and the work being done by local groups across the country. Infection rates have dropped from 18 percent to just over 6 percent.
In a rare show of unity, several lawmakers from Zimbabwe's two rival parties on Friday underwent voluntary HIV tests in a bid to inspire others to do the same to curb the Aids pandemic in the southern African country. Zimbabwe is deeply divided politically, but at a news conference ahead of the testing, lawmakers from the ruling party and the opposition said they stood shoulder-to-shoulder in trying to combat the HIV virus.
A report suggesting the legalisation of abortion in Kenya to reduce maternal mortality has sparked a heated debate in the country. Pro-life organisations claim that preventing unwanted pregnancies is a better way of reducing these deaths. The study, ‘A National Assessment of the Magnitude and Consequences of Unsafe Abortion in Kenya’ recommends that "There should be a review of the policy and law on abortion in Kenya." At present, termination of pregnancy is outlawed in the East African country, except in instances where a woman’s life is in danger.
Swazi school children returned to their hostels Friday (May 7) in preparation for the second term of the academic year. However, a question mark hangs over the fate of thousands of AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children who may not be permitted to continue their schooling this term. In a speech delivered at the opening of parliament last month, King Mswati the Third said, "We will continue to do whatever we can do to ensure that no child is deprived of a basic education." Swaziland is Africa's last absolute monarchy.
Femi Soyinka, one of Nigeria's leading human rights activists, has decided to take a public stand against the discrimination suffered by more than one million of his countrymen and women who are living with AIDS. Soyinka, a former professor of medicine at Ife University in southwestern Nigeria, told IRIN that people living with the HIV virus and AIDS were often shunned by other members of society and treated like criminals. But he warned that their marginalisation was a major factor causing the continued spread of the epidemic in Africa's most populous country.
Homosexuality is a criminal offence in Nigeria, but gay rights groups made their first ever appearance at the country's fourth national AIDS conference in the capital Abuja this week. They called on their fellow countrymen to recognise and protect Nigeria's gay community, pointing out that it has been hit hard by the AIDS pandemic. In Nigeria, homosexual practice can carry a 14-year jail sentence under federal law.
Guinea-Bissau's recently elected parliament was sworn in on Friday, paving the way for the PAIGC, which controls nearly half the seats, to form a new government in this small West African country. PAIGC leader and prime minister designate Carlos Gomes Junior told IRIN that he would announce his new cabinet next week following formal consultations with transitional President Henrique Rosa.
The HIV infection rate in Burkina Faso has declined sharply over the past year, according to the country's latest sentinel survey, which is based on the voluntary testing of pregnant women at ante-natal clinics. The 2004 survey, published last Thursday, estimated that 4.2% of Burkinabe were infected with the HIV virus. That represented a sharp fall from the 6.5% HIV prevalence rate registered by the 2003 sentinel survey, and a peak of 7.2 percent in 1997.
What drives a child from their home to roam the streets, to beg, scavenge and scrounge in the rubbish bins for discarded bits and pieces of food and risk sleeping in street alleys with nothing but plastic sheets to keep warm during cold nights? Even for adults, spending a night in the open, at a railway station or a bus terminus is a prospect one never looks forward to, especially during the cold winter season. According to research done by a local non-governmental organisation, Future's International, more than 12 000 children are now living on Zimbabwe's streets.
Since the Zimbabwe Government embarked on its fast track land resettlement programme, the food situation, particularly in respect of the staple maize, has been getting worse every year. Initially people were talking of food shortage, but "famine" would now seem a more appropriate term to apply to the situation the country now faces. "Famine" has been used to describe situations of extreme food scarcity and starvation in countries such as Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nobody ever contemplated that Zimbabwe, formerly the bread-basket of southern Africa, would come to be referred to in terms of famine.
The UN has delivered an ultimatum to Eritrea after relations between the two sunk to a new low. The UN said Eritrea must cooperate with its peacekeeping force patrolling the border with Ethiopia, or else ask the UN to leave. The UN says its staff have been illegally detained, while Eritrea accuses the peacekeepers of serious crimes including paedophilia. Eritrea also claims the UN is destabilising the region.
Some of the world's poorest people are suffering as a result of the war on terror, a leading UK charity has said. Christian Aid says the UK Government must reverse a "dangerous drift" towards linking aid to the fight against terror. A report cites Iraq, Afghanistan and Uganda as places where funds have been "wrongly diverted".
More than a million people in Burundi are not receiving any medical treatment because they cannot afford it, says aid agency Medecins sans Frontieres. The MSF report said a government move to get people to start paying for treatment, tests and drugs meant many now went without them altogether. Burundi's impoverished government withdrew free health care to its 6.9 million citizens two years ago.
Nine out of 10 women workers in Kenya have been victims of sexual discrimination in their jobs, a survey has suggested. The study, by the International Labour Rights Fund (ILRF) in Washington, USA, found that the women were putting up with the harassment in order to keep their jobs. "In Kenya, we found that the working conditions, at least in terms of women workers, are rather poor," ILRF spokeswoman Natacha Thys told BBC World Service's Africa Live programme.
Zimbabwe's education minister has said 45 private schools will be allowed to open, after being prevented from reopening for a new term last Tuesday. "The crisis is over," Aeneas Chigwedere told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme, adding that police had been withdrawn from the school gates. The schools had been closed because they increased their fees without government approval.
The Congo Republic is to resume exports of afrormosia hardwood to the European Union, officials said Friday, after the EU suspended imports for several months amid concerns that excessive lumbering would drive the trees to extinction. The EU suspended imports of afrormosia, which grows only in three countries of western and central Africa - Cameroon, Congo and its vast neighbour to the east, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - to force the governments to put in place a replanting programme for the tree.
Africa should expand its sources of renewable energy to fight the poverty widespread among the continent's 800 million people, top international energy experts told a conference in Nairobi on Saturday. "It's in Africa where renewable energy is needed most for poverty alleviation," Manfred Konukiewitz, the top energy official in Germany's economic and development ministry, said. He was addressing the final session of a two-day African energy ministers conference, convened by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, to formulate a common position ahead of a world energy conference in Germany next month.
The world's forests, under siege from urban sprawl and ruthless commercial logging, are a treasure trove stacked with biological and genetic resources which could revolutionise medicine. That's the message self-described "renegade scientist" and Canadian author and botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger, will deliver this week at a forestry conference as she stresses the world is wasting a vital resource.
I agree with Tadjudeen (Pambazuka News 154: Great Expectations on South Africa). For the vast majority of Africans in South Africa, the poor are getting poorer. The ANC promised to return 30% of stolen land to landless people. Unfortunately, the ANC has only returned 2.5%. In the meantime, water has been privatised, making it difficult for poor people to access bugfree pipeborne water. This privatisation is already causing a rise in water born diseases such as cholera.
Families are unable to educate their children in a cultural setting, with a syllabuses which can meet their cultural and employment needs. Yet, South Africa is up for sale. Many rich Europeans can find land and or property for 1 million rand, in the midst of starvation, increasing HIV sufferers and unemployment. The expropriation of land, opportunities and resources from the many to service the few "indigenous middle class/elites" is a reflection that, as always, capitalism always serves the interests of the few.
How can the ANC continue to fail the vast majority with shallow rhetoric? One of these days, the disgruntled masses will get very fed up and turn on the very leadership which used to sound so radical and who was so in favour of addressing 400 years of injustice, suffering and servitude. Now, they talk and talk and talk and do not deliver!
Maybe I’ve been in the news business too long - grown irrepressibly outraged. It’s hard to focus on Michael Jackson’s troubles when thousands of women are being gang-raped in Darfur, Sudan, their heads or hands branded to advertise their violation.
It’s difficult to empathize with American’s obesity problem when nearly
400,000 Darfurians will starve to death by Christmas if the international community does not intervene against their government’s predations.
Worst of all, it’s impossible to understand why the humiliation of a few dozen Iraqi men – however unconscionable – could blunt the thunder of a vast human catastrophe: the ongoing genocide of the Sudanese people.
Perhaps we’ve become numb to the "G-word." The U.S. Government and dozens of organisations working in the region have used the term appropriately to describe the systematic slaughter of black Africans in Sudan. Yet, no movement is in sight from the international community. Though it protests loudly, the U.S. has spread itself thin militarily. The major EU countries voice quiet condemnation of the Khartoum regime, perhaps nervously guarding their commercial interests in the exploitation of Sudan’s vast oil reserves. The African Union has voted Sudan power broker on the UN Human Rights Commission. The United Nations rings it hands, but Kofi Annan, the Director of Peacekeeping Operations during the Rwanda genocide, evidently cannot muster the moral authority to direct Security Council action. Indeed, the crisis represents brilliant timing and political calculation on the part of Sudan’s National Islamic Front government to prosecute its final solution with little interference.
One million people died in Rwanda in 1994 during one hundred days of international dithering. By comparison, Sudan is a slow-motion genocide; the daily death toll is now estimated at 1000 to 2000 human beings. That number will escalate wildly the longer the regime is allowed to act with impunity.
The media has essentially ignored what many are calling "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today." Admittedly, images from the scene are hard to come by. The Khartoum regime has blocked and/or controlled access for every kind of investigator. Can we allow this to militate against coverage? How long do we wait for a galvanizing image? Who will be brave enough to break from the lockstep of domestic navel-gazing to provide extensive, continuing coverage of this cataclysm?
We urgently need journalists, editors and producers to reveal this genocide for the horror it is. This is our watch. We have an opportunity to put steel into the values we claimed to embrace with the slogan "Never Again." Or will we remain more comfortable covering genocide anniversaries than the genocides themselves?
United Nations forces in the volatile north-eastern Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Saturday stepped up their patrols, a day after they killed at least 10 militia in clashes there, a UN spokesperson said. The UN force is in charge of peacekeeping in the province, which has been beset for several years by brutal ethnic violence between the Lendu and the minority Hema ethnic group. Periodic Lendu-Hema violence in Ituri, which is rich in gold and diamonds, has caused 50 000 deaths and displaced 500 000 people since 1999.
Thanks first of all for your superb weekly newsletter - it's a real pleasure to read, even though it's only the 2nd week I've been subscribed.
I'm just writing to let you know that today's newsletter was mistakenly caught out by the "Spam Assassin" email spam filter running on my hosts' server. The filter is available on a lot of email accounts and websites worldwide.
You could advise subscribers on the website and in the next newsletter to whitelist the email address, if subscribers have that possibility - like I should have done as soon as I signed up!
PZ REPLY: Thanks for getting in touch and informing us about this problem. We would like to take this opportunity to remind all our subscribers to make sure that their email spam filters do not block Pambazuka News.
The Zambian government must prove its political commitment to gender equality by implementing recommendations of the national gender policy, writes gender activist Wilcliff Sakala. "This challenge is an indication of the displeasure that women in this Southern African nation still feel at being discriminated against in many key areas of national decision-making. In Zambia, women make up nearly 52 per cent of the country’s 10 million people, but their role is negligible when it comes to determining affairs of the state. There are only two women in a Cabinet of 25 ministers and just 16 of 158 members of parliament are women."
On Monday, May 5, 2004, staff of the 'Nana FM' radio station went on strike to protest the assault on their colleague, Yves Kpéto, by state security forces. Yves Kpéto, a reporter with the 'Nana FM' radio station, as well as K. Amouzouvi, of the weekly 'Le Combat du people' newspaper, were on Friday, April 30, 2004, brutalised by security forces when they went to the Université de Lomé campus to cover a demonstration by students of the university. They both sustained severe injuries. According to Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)-Togo sources, the staff of 'Nana FM' have since the morning of May 5, been playing only music on the station, to sympathise with their colleague.
In 1995, the International Association of Constitutional Law took the first step to develop a network of constitutionalists from African countries in order to provide a forum for the exchange of knowledge and information of African constitutionalists who took part in the scientific activities of the association. Within this framework, in April 1997 at the Gorée Institute in Senegal, a conference was organised on "Constitutionalism, universalism and democracy". Various scholars, representatives of the different African regions and legal systems and others involved in the international association took part. The essays in the present volume were presented and discussed during this conference. The book is a sequel to the earlier published volume "Constitutionalism in Africa. A quest for autochtonous principles".
"The UN Security Council has twice discussed HIV/AIDS as a global security threat in the last two years. But, I respectfully submit, it has not yet fully grasped the issue. A number of academics and think tanks have also addressed the subject, including the International Crisis Group. But the evidence and analysis at their disposal does not yet allow them to come to firm conclusions. However, I believe that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is a fundamental underlying threat to security on this continent." This is according to a submission by Alex de Waal, of the organisation Justice Africa, to the U.N. Secretary General's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change: The HIV/AIDS and the Threat to Security in Africa.
Kenya is not among eight African countries chosen last Thursday to apply for a new set of US development grants totalling one billion dollars. It was excluded mainly on the grounds that it had not adequately controlled official corruption. It was also given failing grades on some of the other 16 tests for eligibility for the new aid programme, known as the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). In Nairobi, the US embassy said that Kenya remained eligible "for consideration" during next year's selection process.
Trade union rights are a misnomer in Rwanda according to a new International Confederation of Free Trade Unions report launched to coincide with the WTO review on Rwandan trade policy (10th and 12th May). The ICFTU report on the central African country shows shortcomings in the application of several core labour conventions which the government itself has ratified and calls upon the Rwandan authorities to comply with core labour standards. The report identifies several legal failings, particularly concerning the right to strike.
Some 16,462 people have been vaccinated against meningitis and 1,544 children against measles in a campaign carried out by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Central African Republic (CAR) Ministry of Health, an official told IRIN. MSF coordinator Carlos Recio said the immunisation campaign against meningitis "A" in the northwestern sub-prefecture of Boguila was conducted in collaboration with the UN World Health Organisation.
The Nigerian government should immediately conduct an independent investigation into the massacre of several hundred people in Yelwa on May 2, Human Rights Watch says. The federal and state authorities should also take concrete steps to prevent a further escalation of interethnic violence in Plateau State. "Unlike the findings of previous commissions of inquiry, the results of this investigation should be made public and acted upon," said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Africa Division. Armed members of the predominantly Christian Tarok ethnic group on May 2 attacked the town of Yelwa, in the southern part of Plateau State, apparently in reprisal for earlier attacks against Taroks by members of the predominantly Muslim Fulani ethnic group.
Access to antiretroviral treatment must be drastically scaled up as a key challenge of the response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Prevention and treatment must be seen as two sides of the same coin; antiretroviral treatment improves and extends lives, and provides a boost to prevention strategies. The second challenge is the increasing impact of the epidemic on African women; because women are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, there must be an additional focus on women in the African response. Thirdly, the humanitarian crisis in southern Africa has brought into sharp relief the need to integrate the HIV/AIDS response with broader development and humanitarian initiatives. This is according to a report produced by UNAIDS that aims to highlight successful initiatives against AIDS across Africa.
Over 350 social researchers, doctors, representatives of national and international organisations, NGOs and donor agencies are attending the Second African Conference on Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research (SAHARA) in Cape Town, South Africa. The four-day conference, themed "Promoting an African Alliance to Mitigate the Effects of HIV/AIDS on a Sustainable Basis", was organised by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) to share ideas among scientists working on the social impact of HIV/AIDS treatment and care programmes across sub-Saharan Africa. It is anticipated that the sharing of expertise, experience and research will help inform policy and programme implementation.
Zambian NGOs will continue to track the use of funds saved under the Highly-Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, despite the government's suspension of an independent monitoring team. Before its suspension last month, the HIPC Tracking and Monitoring Team, established by the ministry of finance in 2001, identified several alleged cases of abuse of funds involving top civil servants. The team's last report, released in February this year, dealt with investigations into disbursements made in the Copperbelt and Northern provinces, and claimed that thousands of [US] dollars of HIPC funds had been spent on fuel, festivals and political celebrations.
With governments lagging in fulfilling promises made at the United Nations two years ago, millions of children continue to die from preventable diseases and to be deprived of such basic rights as education, safe drinking water, and protection from abuse, UNICEF says. "We are crawling toward goals that we should be marching toward," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. At the United Nations Special Session on Children in May 2002, governments agreed to time-bound goals intended to improve child health and survival, provide quality education, reverse the impact of HIV/AIDS, and protect children from abuse, exploitation and violence.
For years, a discrepancy in global climate data has fuelled debate over global warming. Temperatures in the troposphere, the first 11 km of atmosphere, have been rising slower than models predict given the rate of increase in temperature on the Earth's surface. But polar orbiting satellites show that cooling in the stratosphere - the next layer of the atmosphere - explains the inconsistency, according to research published in Nature.
The size of Zimbabwe's population may decrease by as much as 23% between 1992 and 2010 due to the country's HIV/AIDS epidemic, according to a report published last Thursday by the country's Institute of Development Poverty Reduction Forum, Xinhua News Agency reports. According to the report, which was funded by the United Nations Development Programme, the country's population could have grown from 11.8 million in 1992 to 16.6 million in 2010 without HIV/AIDS. However, because of the disease, the country's annual population growth rate is expected to become negative by 2010.
The famously taciturn South African president reveals much of himself in Long Walk to Freedom. A good deal of this autobiography was written secretly while Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years on Robben Island by South Africa's apartheid regime. Among the book's interesting revelations is Mandela's ambivalence toward his lifetime of devotion to public works. It cost him two marriages and kept him distant from a family life he might otherwise have cherished.
Legendary scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois laboured to complete an "Encyclopaedia Africana" before his death in 1963. Just over 35 years later, two Harvard educators, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Ghanaian-born Kwame Anthony Appiah, have brought Du Bois' intellectual dream to life.
The democratic opening presented by Nigeria’s successful transition to civil rule (June 1998 to May 1999) unleashed a host of hitherto repressed or dormant political forces. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between genuine demands by these forces on the state and outright criminality and mayhem. Post-transition Nigeria is experiencing the proliferation of ethnic militia movements purportedly representing, and seeking to protect, their ethnic interests in a country which appears incapable of providing the basic welfare needs of its citizens.
With this sensational first collection, SDP has established himself as a poet of repute. Refusing to patronisingly romanticise the Kenyan landscape and people in the way that many expatriate writers have done, he focuses primarily on personal and social issues that affect us all in the region - subtly, intelligently and uncompromisingly. Youthful, muscular, well-crafted and often critical of a blind status-quo, these new generation poems are sure to stimulate all readers. Er, and some of 'em are funny!
Five African writers have been shortlisted for this year's Caine Prize for African Writing. The winner of the US$ 15,000 prize will be announced on 19 July, in Oxford, England.
The 2004 shortlist comprises:
· Doreen Baingana (Uganda) for 'Hunger', from the Sun Magazine, March 2003;
· Brian Chikwava (Zimbabwe) for 'Seventh Street Alchemy' from Writing Still, Weaver Press, Harare 2003;
· Parselelelo Kantai (Kenya) for 'The Story of Comrade Lemma and the Black Jerusalem Boys Band' from Kwani?, Nairobi 2003;
· Monica Arac de Nyeko (Uganda) for 'Strange Fruit' from Cook Communication, online magazine AuthorMe;
· Chika Unigwe (Nigeria) for 'The Secret' from online literature magazine Open Wide.