PAMBAZUKA NEWS 142: RWANDA TEN YEARS AFTER THE GENOCIDE: SOME REMINDERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE TO THE CRISIS
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 142: RWANDA TEN YEARS AFTER THE GENOCIDE: SOME REMINDERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE TO THE CRISIS
Cheap and widely available antiretroviral therapy for treating HIV and AIDS may seem like the solution to Africa's AIDS epidemic. But if not carefully planned and carried out, any programmes to administer the drugs could be disastrous. In this article, Warren Stevens, Steve Kaye and Tumani Corrah of the Medical Research Council Laboratories in Banjul, Gambia, argue that consistent prescription and close monitoring of the drugs are essential to prevent widespread drug resistance.
Short-term relief followed by long-term disaster is not sound policy. Nonetheless, that could be a result of the Aids strategy being contemplated by the World Health Organisation, which on December 1 - World Aids Day - announced a plan to treat 3-million people with HIV/Aids by 2005. The WHO is proposing that billions of dollars be spent on increasing access to anti-retroviral drugs. That is a noble intention. However, it may not be the most cost-effective way to stem the tide of HIV/Aids: it may even be counterproductive. Let's be clear. Reducing the cost and increasing the supply of medicines to the poor is a good thing. But on its own it is not enough. Nor should it be today's priority. The roots of Africa's health care crisis run far deeper and broader than a mere shortage of drugs.
The Lusaka High Court has ruled that it was wrong for former president Frederick Chiluba to award houses bought with public funds to lawyers Vincent Malambo and Eric Silwamba after they represented him in the 1996 presidential election petition. Judge Christopher Mushabati said this in the case in which Malambo and Silwamba were contesting the seizure of their houses by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).
Parents of 40 girls who fled from their homes in Marakwet District to escape female genital mutilation (FGM) are locked in a dispute with a human rights organisation. And now the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (CHRD) is strongly protesting against the alleged harassment of its staff by the girls’ parents, who are demanding their daughters back. The centre’s executive director, Mr Ken Wafula, has told a news conference that his staff had been threatened with unspecified consequences if they do not return the girls to their homes.
War, and peace, aren't what they used to be. In civil wars, the targets are mainly civilians. And when strife erupts in one of the world's dozens of trouble spots, Rosalind Boyd says, all too often it's women and children first - in the worst possible ways. "Men and women experience wars differently," said Boyd, director of the Centre for Developing-Area Studies at McGill University. "Men are primarily the ones who are holding the guns, and women and children are primarily the victims."
A Rwandan rebel movement based in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Forces democratiques de liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), has dismissed as unfounded reports that it had prevented some 3,000 former combatants and civilians from returning to Rwanda. "The FDLR has always supported the right of any Rwandan refugee to return freely to his homeland," Augustin Dukuze, the FDLR spokesman, said on Saturday.
At least 10,000 Congolese, mostly illegal miners, have been expelled from Angola since December 2003 under inhumane conditions, a Congolese human rights organisation said on Thursday. "They were forced back by the military and hundreds of others have been arrested and detained in subhuman conditions," Dolly Ibefo, vice-president of the rights body, Voice of the Voiceless (Voix des Sans Voix), said.
The controversial Children's Bill has been resubmitted to Parliament, but children's rights groups say the Bill still has holes that leave children vulnerable. The Bill involves only national stipulations concerning parental rights and duties, the rights of children, surrogate motherhood, adoption and child courts. Another Bill on implementation within the provinces will be tabled before the new Parliament after elections. "Some steps need to be taken now rather than later," explained Ministry of Social Development spokesperson Mbulelo Musi, adding that the debate on complex implementation issues and cost should not be allowed to delay assistance to children now.
International donors gathering at the United Nations this week can best help Liberia by pledging funds to rehabilitate its tens of thousands of child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released on Monday. The 43-page report, “How to Fight, How to Kill: Child Soldiers in Liberia,” documents how more than 15,000 child soldiers fought on all sides of the Liberian civil war, and that many units were composed primarily of children. The report argues that establishing a firm peace in the West African nation will depend on the successful reintegration of child soldiers into civil society.
There is a direct relationship between armed conflicts and the world’s 35 million displaced people. The overwhelming majority of displaced people have been forced from their homes and countries due to the direct and indirect impacts of war and conflict. Many times, it is the actual gunfire and imminent threat of death that drives them away. All too often, it is the indirect consequences of conflict, such as fear of atrocities, kidnappings, rapes, looting and other human rights violations that force them to seek refuge. And if these are not enough, conflict can result in a lack of food, health care, sanitation, education and the ability to work and provide for families, driving people to leave and seek opportunities that no longer exist in their villages and countries.
Drugs distributed as part of Kenya's AIDS medicine programme are being sold on the black market, according to a report. Unscrupulous business people are selling the drugs on the back streets of the capital, Nairobi, at less than US$65 for a monthly cocktail, nearly quarter the normal price. Health minister Charity Ngilu announced last year that selected hospitals would dispense the drugs on strictly prescription-only terms and at subsidised prices. The scheme currently provides antiretroviral drugs to 6000 people infected with HIV.
Most refugees spend years living in border zones, in unsatisfactory and unsafe circumstances, with few means to support or educate themselves and their children, and few prospects. Their legal status in the host country is uncertain. They are not granted full asylum, nor are they likely to be resettled in a third country. These protracted refugee situations are characterized by a "care and maintenance" or "warehousing" model of assistance in countries of first asylum, meaning that the basic needs of refugees residing in camps are met. Local integration is a currently neglected, long-term solution that presents an alternative to refugee camps.
Within the framework of the new programme initiatives that are being implemented by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), proposals are invited for the constitution of Comparative Research Networks (CRNs) to undertake comparative studies on or around a variety of themes. The primary purpose of the CRNs is to encourage the development and consolidation of a comparative analytic perspective in the work of African social researchers. In so doing, it is hoped to establish a strong corpus of comparative studies produced by African scholars and which could help to advance theoretical knowledge and discussion. For the period 2004 – 2005, the Council will be open to receive proposals up to 31 July, 2004. Notification of the result of the selection exercise will be made by 31 August, 2004.
Zimbabwe captain Heath Streak, while urging Australia to tour his country in May to guarantee the continued success of cricket there, denied the claims of yet another former teammate who said virulent racism was entrenched in Zimbabwe's cricket structure. Writing in Wisden Cricketer magazine this month, former fast bowler Bryan Strang said Zimbabwean children were "learning first hand from coaches and policy-makers that skin colour matters" and that many in the cricket community disagreed with the "politicisation and racialisation of cricket in Zimbabwe".
Karatina Town seems a long way from Nairobi, Kenya's capital city of three million people. Yet, 100 km away, about a two-hour drive on the country's tattered roads, the town is the food basket of the city. At dawn, while Kenya turns in its sleep, Peter Kimani is awake and on his way to Karatina Central Farmers Market, the largest produce market in Eastern Africa, to dispose of his produce.
The Research on Knowledge Systems (RoKS) initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation (www.rockfound.org) is launching a competition to support research on the social equity and public policy challenges of transformative technologies faced by developing countries.
Rwanda has allowed the first private radio stations to start broadcasting since the 1994 genocide. Five new stations have already been given permission to set up and two more religious stations will be authorised soon, said the information minister.
Too many of the developing world’s populace remain untouched by Information and Communication Technology (ICTs). This “digital divide” threatens to exacerbate the already-wide gaps between the rich and the poor, within and among countries.
Ghanaian women's rights groups have called for stronger laws against female genital mutilation (FGM) following two landmark rulings in northern Ghana against the traditional practice.
Efforts to fight the HIV/Aids epidemic are failing because they are not reaching women and girls, who are most affected in the poorest countries, according to Peter Piot, Executive Director of the United Nations Aids Programme. Dr Piot was speaking at the launch of a new body called the Global Coalition on Women and Aids, which aims to take up the cause of women in Africa and Asia who do not have status or economic power, and are so subordinate to their man that they cannot negotiate even the use of a condom within marriage.
It's been a week of gloom and MyDoom for computer boffins struggling to battle the world's fastest-spreading email worm.
Can extreme, violent video games influence people's actions? Can playing a killer make you a killer?
The South African Council of Churches (SACC) and apartheid victims' groups have come out in support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's last-minute appeal to an American court to allow apartheid victims' litigation for compensation against foreign companies to go ahead. But government chief spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe was dismissive of Tutu's appeal who said that not settling the matter (of apartheid victims) inside South Africa would have "profound implications for the future of the country, for instance for the assessment of the country risk profile, and for investment and job creation."
A row has broken out between the army and residents of Uganda's biggest Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) settlement, Pabbo camp, in the northern Gulu District, with the army claiming that the camp harbours rebel collaborators and the IDPs accusing the army of starting a fire which destroyed much of the camp during an operation to arrest suspects. Pabbo houses over 62,000 people fleeing Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) operations in northern Uganda. They are part of at least 1.2 million Ugandans who have been forced to take refuge in camps.
The treatment of Zimbabwean citizens and other people from the region who migrate legally and illegally to neighbouring countries mainly Botswana and South Africa is often catastrophic, raising underlying questions about xenophobia. In most cases their human rights are systematically and grossly violated. The question of ill treatment and violent malpractices on illegal migrants has taken on a new urgency in the wake of recent reports on the flogging of some 100 Zimbabweans who illegally entered Botswana.
Since colonial times and throughout Angola's 27-year civil war, the Angolan San have been invisible, forgotten and abused suffering social exclusion, discrimination and social exploitation. The hunter-gatherer San are the original inhabitants of Southern Africa. Some 4,000 years ago they began losing land to Bantu people migrating from the north. The arrival of white settlers in the 17th century was accompanied by their dispossession, enslavement and slaughter. Today the San number roughly 100,000 across Southern Africa.
As fighting and displacement of civilians intensifies in Darfur, western Sudan, Amnesty International has requested all parties to the conflict to respect international human rights and humanitarian law at all times. Massive abuses of human rights in the region are documented in a new 43-page report entitled: Sudan: Darfur: "Too many people killed for no reason". In an attempt to end the escalating armed conflict in Darfur, Sudanese government forces and government-aligned militia (the "Janjawid") are threatening the lives, liberty and property of hundreds of thousands of civilians through indiscriminate bombings, killings, torture, including rape of women and girls, arrests, abductions and forced displacement.
"A small blasting job is required in Bluff Hill, fix and supply: $4 million. I try to get hold of the client, Mrs Shambare, over the phone for a quotation. I spend two hours in the office. Waiting can be trying. I chat with the receptionist. Mr Mukamba, the engineer for CPG, comes to inform me that he can only manage to buy explosives next week. I walk out resignedly." Zimbabwean poet Julius Chingono works as a rock-blasting contractor in daily life to support his family. He is also a Mufundisi – pastor – in the Tsitsi dzaMwari Apostolic Church. This posting on the website of Kubatana.net reproduces the poet's diaries, which give a fascinating insight into life in Zimbabwe.
Who says that donors won't give large gifts online? For many nonprofit organisations, donations of $1,000 and up are considered large, or major gifts. So, are these big gifts coming online? A recent study shows that a surprisingly significant number of major donations are coming in online. The study looked at 3,151 fundraising campaigns that collected donations during 2003. There were a variety of campaigns involved in the study, including small to very large, across over 500 cities in the United States.
A man is HIV positive. His doctor prescribes Bactrim, a common anti-biotic used as a prophylaxis (prevention) and for the treatment for pneumocystis carinii pneumonia – a generally treatable condition if the person is HIV negative, but potentially fatal if he or she is HIV positive. At present, the pharmacist, private hospital or doctor who dispenses this patient’s prescription will charge up to R126,94 for 20 adult-strength Bactrim capsules. After May this year, when government enacts the recently-published draft regulations relating to a transparent pricing system for medicines and scheduled substances, the same prescription could cost as little as R46,56. The old pricing structure in South Africa is notoriously complicated, secretive and confusing with incentives, discounts and mark ups hidden along the drug chain. Until now, South African consumers, who pay amongst the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world, have suffered the brunt of these huge markups and profits.
The Municipal Services Project (MSP) is looking for an experienced Project Coordinator to manage research and administrative activities in the project. This is a two-year contract position from March 2004 to March 2006 with the possibility of a one-year extension. The Coordinator will be based in Cape Town at the International Labour Research and Information Group Trust (ILRIG) offices, affiliated with the University of Cape Town.
UPDF soldiers have been named among the people who are raping girls in internally displaced people's (IDPs) camps in Kitgum district, Northern Uganda. The claims were made by a group of MPs following a fact-finding visit to the district last week.They said reports showed that girls were raped by their peers, men from the camps, rebels and UPDF soldiers. However, Army spokesman Maj. Shaban Bantariza said that the report needed to be looked at critically.
Urgent Action Fund Africa is accepting applications for a full-time, salaried Program Officer with a focus on grant making in Africa. The position will be based in Nairobi, Kenya. The Program Officer will work with the US-based Program Team in reviewing and managing correspondence from African organizations that request support from the Urgent Action Fund. The Program Officer will report to the Director of UAF-Africa and will supervise a Program Associate.
The following responsibilities and qualifications are required for this position:
- Facilitate the implementation of the Principles for Election Management, Monitoring and Observation in the SADC region (PEMMO)
- Coordinate EISA's programmes on the use of PEMMO to prevent and manage election-related conflict
- Provide technical support to domestic observer groups on the implementation of PEMMO in their respective countries
- Set up and participate in workshops, roundtables and conferences
- Ensure all programmatic and financial reports are delivered to donors timeously
- Contribute to the growth of the Department's work and identify new opportunities.
Representatives of women’s organisations from Djibouti, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, met in Djibouti from 22 to 26 January to develop plans for a “Stop Violence against Women” campaign. The workshop, funded by Novib and attended by representatives from Oxfam GB and Amnesty International, provided training to the participants on campaigning. Regional and national plans focusing on different issues related to the main campaign, such as female genital mutilation (FGM), discriminatory laws, conflict-related violence against women and abduction of women and girls, were developed during the workshop and activities will start in February. Amnesty International is launching a global campaign on the same subject on 5 March in New York. The Somali campaign, coordinated by three women networks (COGWO, NAGAD and WAWA), will focus on FGM and be launched on 8 March this year. The activities will include research, a launching event, public awareness and media activities and education, among others. This information comes from the Novib weekly situation report on the Somalia National Reconciliation Conference in Kenya.
Martin Oketch, 13, sat his Primary Leaving Examinations in Uganda late last year. His first choice for secondary education was St Mary's College Kisubi, one of the country's best boys' schools. "I want to become a doctor like Uncle Nathan,” he says, pointing to his relative. However, Martin's exam results - though good - were just shy of the grades needed to gain admission to Kisubi. He was just one casualty of an increasingly fierce competition to get a place in secondary school - this as Uganda's system of universal primary education (UPE) yields record numbers of primary school graduates.
Somalia took an important step towards peace this week when warring leaders agreed to set up a transitional parliament to help rule the tattered nation. The Horn of Africa country has been without central government since 1991, when President Mohammed Siad Barre was deposed. Last Thursday's agreement came after leaders of over 23 factions and Somalia's Transitional National Government (TNG) resolved differences over the number of legislators who should sit in the parliament.
The signing of a wealth-sharing agreement earlier this month between Sudanese officials and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army was hailed an important step towards peace in that country. Now, hopes are growing that the accord might also spell the end of another conflict: that in northern Uganda. Since 1986, this region has been plagued by fighting between government forces and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Headed by Joseph Kony, the group says it wants to establish a new government in Uganda based on the Biblical ten commandments.
Malawi has launched a fishing project that will benefit more than 300,000 people who depend on fishing for their livelihood. The project, known as Lake Malawi Artisanal Fisheries Development Project, aims to improve household income in the lakeshore districts of Likoma, Nkhatabay, Nkhotakota, Salima and Mangochi. It was launched on January 24 and is expected to improve fish stocks as well as catches from Lake Malawi. The first component of the project will include construction of working tables, portable water, drying racks and fish storage facilities.
Politicians and civil servants in Rwanda have been asked to declare their wealth in a campaign against corruption in government. Rwanda's newly appointed Ombudsman Tito Rutaremara has told the BBC those who do not comply will be prosecuted. Starting this week, leaders, who include President Paul Kagame, will fill in forms stating what they own.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has accused the international community of failing to learn from the genocide. He said calls for the UN-backed court in Arusha to investigate his own troops were a deliberate confusion of issues by people employing double standards.
The Nigerian Government has said it hopes that a suspended polio vaccination campaign in the north of the country will resume soon. Immunisation was halted in three states last year following fears that the vaccine was contaminated. The World Health Organisation, WHO, has warned that unless the spread of the disease is checked, it would undermine eradication efforts.
At least 30 fighters have been killed in fighting between the last active Hutu rebel group and government forces in Burundi, an army official has said. Burundian army chief Germain Niyoyankana said dozens of weapons were recovered from Forces for National Liberation (FNL) rebels in the clashes.
The government is trying to drive forward reconciliation but doesn't the memory of the genocide, the bodies in the churches and classrooms hinder the process? "Memory is very important because it is the foundation of the prevention of genocide in the future generation," says Francois Gurambe, the chairman of the national survivor group Ibuka or Remember. " We think that remembrance is important in the construction of a united society because you can't have a united society without justice. Justice means first of all truth and truth is not possible without remembrance."
Uncertainty shrouds the generous pay proposed for university lecturers and the next phase of teachers' salary increment. In an interview with the East African Standard last Thursday, Finance Minister, Mr David Mwiraria, said the Government may find it difficult to convince the IMF to approve further salary hikes following the recent pay increment for police and prison staff.
University of Zimbabwe's (UZ) lecturers and non-academic staff on Friday gave the Public Service Commission (PSC), through their employer the University Council, a 14-day notice to go on strike following delays in awarding the workers a salary increment as ordered by the court last year. In September last year, the government was ordered by the Labour Court to award the UZ employees salary adjustments of more than 800 percent backdated to July of that year but nothing has been done by the government.
State radio said voter turnout was heavy in a parliamentary by-election in southern Zimbabwe where the opposition said balloting was marred by intimidation and vote rigging. The two-day poll ends on Tuesday in the ruling party stronghold of Gutu 240km south of Harare to fill the seat left vacant by the death of vice-president Simon Muzenda last September.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was due to meet the leaders of Nigeria and Cameroon in Geneva on Saturday to review progress on their deal to end a long-standing border dispute and to dampen tensions between the two countries. The meeting will be the third between Annan, President Paul Biya of Cameroon and his Nigerian counterpart Olusegun Obasanjo since the UN chief stepped in to encourage the west African neighbours to follow an International Court of Justice ruling in 2002.
More than 14,000 living with AIDS in Nigeria who had been receiving antiretroviral (ARV) drugs subsidised by the government are running out of supplies, an HIV/AIDS activist group said on Tuesday. Nsikak Ekpe, president of AIDS Alliance Nigeria (AAN), an organisation which represents people living with AIDS in Africa's most populous country, said the government had stopped supplying drugs at almost all the 25 treatment centres selected for the programme across the country.
Civil rights activists in Angola's Cabinda province on Tuesday complained of ongoing harassment by the authorities in the troubled oil-rich northern enclave. Over the weekend some 1,500 activists were prevented from launching an organisation that would call for a peaceful solution to ongoing hostilities in the region and monitor alleged human rights abuses.
Zambia's already understaffed schools were dealt another blow this week after the government announced that some 9,000 teachers would not be deployed because of a lack of resources. The education ministry's press officer, Michael Katowa, on Tuesday countered media reports that the failure to employ teachers trained in 2002 and 2003 was due to World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) budget conditionalities.
Eritrean military leaders have rejected assertions by the United Nations that the border with Ethiopia is "militarily stable", claiming instead that Eritrean territory is being occupied. Eritrean Brig-Gen Abrahaley Kifle said on Monday that he disagreed with the UN’s assessment that the situation on the 1,000-km long border remained stable. He made the statement at the UN-hosted Military Coordination Committee (MCC) talks held between Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Following confirmation on 23 January of a polio case in the southwestern province of Ombella Mpoko, Central African Republic (CAR) health officials have scheduled an anti-polio immunisation drive in the province for 23-28 February. "To avoid other cases, all the children in the region must be immunised," Nestor Nali, the health minister, was quoted as saying on Monday by state-owned Radio Centrafrique.
In the past two weeks, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), hidden away in the dusty northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, has received far more attention than it is accustomed. The first week brought Gen Romeo Dallaire, who commanded the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, to testify in the tribunal's most important case, known as "Military I". With Dallaire came international attention. That very same week also saw a judgement delivered against Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda, a former minister of education. The tribunal was basking in the spotlight. "We have never had the press coverage that we have now," Roland Amoussouga, the tribunal's spokesman, told IRIN.
Schabir Shaik, closely associated with Deputy President Jacob Zuma, is to face fraud and corruption charges in the Durban High Court in October, SABC radio news reported. The trial is set to start on October 11. Shaik faces charges of corruption, fraud, theft of company assets, tax evasion and money laundering related to the government's arms deal.
France’s entire political establishment was rocked with a “seismic shock” on January 30 when Alain Juppé, chairman of France’s ruling party, the UMP (Union pour un mouvement populaire - Union for a Popular Movement) mayor of the city of Bordeaux and former French prime minister, was convicted in the Nanterre law court in Paris for “the use of public office for personal ends.” He received an 18-month suspended jail sentence and loss of civic rights for five years, which automatically bars him from holding or running for public office for 10 years. The Juppé verdict reveals a deep-going culture of corruption in political life at the highest levels dating back to the Mitterrand years and beyond and spreading over into foreign policy, particularly in Africa.
The government of Benin has put on trial 27 of its own judges on charges of embezzling millions of dollars of state funds. They form part of a group of 99 court and finance ministry officials charged with illegally pocketing more than US$15 million of state funds over a period of four years.
Zimbabwe's Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister July Moyo has been accused of using cash from his own department as collateral for a Z1-billion loan for a company owned by two close associates. Moyo's ministry is said to have deposited the money into a First Bank account to secure a loan for Smoothnest Investments. Smoothnest is partly owned by National Social Security Authority (NSSA) chairman Edwin Manikai, who was appointed by Moyo to head up the NSSA public and private sector pension fund.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a veteran Liberian politician and former UN official, has taken on a task which many regard as impossible - ridding her country of its deeply ingrained and all pervasive corruption. Johnson Sirleaf, who came a poor second to Charles Taylor in the 1997 presidential election, has just been appointed chairman of a Commission on Good Governance by Liberia's transitional government.
President Museveni has said he is ready to hand over power in an orderly manner. "Let the opposition relax; I will hand over power when there is a good arrangement," Museveni said on Friday during the 10th graduation ceremony at Mbarara University of Science and Technology. Museveni's last term of office ends in 2006. Although he has not publicly stated any intention to seek another term, critics have accused him of not clarifying his stand on the matter in light of calls from some of his supporters to lift the two-term constitutional limit.
The Human Rights Commission had recommended that Parliament consider amending the Promotion of Access to Information Act to make dispute resolution in terms of the act accessible and affordable, commissioner Leon Wessels has said. He said at an international conference that the amendment should also allow the commission to take actions to court and mediate where necessary, giving it the same powers it has in terms of the Promotion of Equality and the Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act.
The abduction of women and children in African military conflicts is on the rise, according to a United Nations report released last week. "Young girls are being taken hostage and abducted for marriage to military commanders and long-haul truck drivers," said the Economic Commission for Africa , a UN body based in Ethiopia .
In spite of many recent advances such as the creation of the International Criminal Court, impunity is still one of the most crucial issues facing the international community and national governments in the pursuit of the respect for international human rights and humanitarian law, says the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) in a position paper prepared for the 2004 United Nations Commission on Human Rights 60th session to be held March 15 - April 23 in Geneva. With regards the situation in the DRC, OMCT said that though much progress had been made, grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law had continued, notably in the east of the country. "OMCT remains gravely concerned about support (arms, logistics and human resources) that is being provided to the belligerent groups perpetrating the afore-mentioned violations. This support comes from nearby regional powers, notably from Uganda and Rwanda." Sections of the paper deal with Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, Torture and Ill-Treatment, The Right to Reparation, Human Rights Defenders and Violence against Women. The situation in the DRC, Sudan and Togo are also highlighted.
President Thabo Mbeki wrapped up a tour of the opposition stronghold of KwaZulu-Natal on Saturday by warning that any violence around South Africa's coming elections would be stamped out. Fighting between activists from Mbeki's African National Congress (ANC) and the province's dominant Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) killed 20,000 people in the 1980s, and after a decade of relative calm, tensions have risen since election campaigning began this month.
Africa will witness several key elections this year, with some constituting a litmus test for nations emerging from war and unrest and others marking a milestone, as in South Africa which fetes the 10th anniversary of the end of apartheid. In nations such as Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia, the polls will see veteran rulers stepping down - a sign that things are changing in a continent where democracy often carries less clout than in other parts of the world. The most important polls in terms of the number of voters will be those in Algeria and South Africa, two economic powerhouses located on the northern and southern extremities of the continent.
Sub-Saharan Africa should have more say in the decisions of the International Monetary Fund, Tanzania's finance minister told a seminar on Tuesday. The minister, Basil Mramba, said African nations, including some of the poorest countries in the world, had less and less influence over the workings of the world finance body. "It is still of major concern that we from sub-Saharan Africa are represented by only two chairs on the Fund's Executive Boards while also our quota share and voting rights continue to decline," he said in the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam.
United Nations refugee agency staff and their counterparts from Chad have finished registering almost 5,000 Sudanese refugees in and around the border town of Tine ahead of their urgent relocation to safer positions further inside Chad. A spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the agency wants to move the refugees as quickly as possible after several bombs exploded near Tine last Thursday.
This paper produced by the United Nations (UN) Research Institute for Social Development critically examines environmental movements in Sub-Saharan Africa by drawing on two prominent cases: the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People of Nigeria's Niger Delta and the Green Belt Movement of Kenya. Its thesis is that environmental movements in Africa operate within a transformative logic in which struggles for power over environmental resources connect broader popular social struggles for popular empowerment and democracy. It concludes that a conflict between extractive forces and those of popular resistance lies at the heart of on-going struggles for the control of the African environment. Furthermore, it says that African states repress environmental movements that interrogate the exclusion of the majority from effective participation in the management and control of environmental resources.
Kenyans have been consuming imported foods that were long banned without their knowledge. Many supermarkets in Kenya have stocks of these banned foods, also known as genetically modified (GM) crops, and the Government is helpless because it does not have the capacity to test and detect if the food is unnatural. The most consumed GM food comes into Kenya from import food markets like South Africa and the US. The South African brokers sell maize bought by some local millers because of the low price compared to locally grown maize.
A Parliamentary committee has asked the government to revoke the Nile Treaty with Egypt. The committee on natural resources says the pre-independence treaties give Egypt monopoly over the Nile waters. It also wants Egypt to pay sh2b for damages by the rising lake levels as per a 1950 agreement. The agreement, signed by the British on behalf of Uganda, allows Egypt to pay for rising water levels caused by its heavy industrialisation along the river.
Some rural communities whose traditional authorities are not recognised fear that the new Land Reform Act may give rise to disputes. The new Communal Land Reform Act requires that people with existing land in communal areas apply for their land to be registered to acquire a land registration certificate from the communal land boards within three years, or risk the land being allocated to others.
ZANU-PF is reportedly continuing with its violent campaign against supporters of the opposition, particularly in Gutu North where a parliamentary by-election was scheduled for February 1-2. Not only that, the ruling party is also being accused of using traditional leaders to frustrate the campaign activities of the MDC. "Only the private media revealed these barbaric tactics, which the ruling party has unashamedly employed in every election since the entrance into the political arena of the opposition MDC in late 1999," said the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe in their latest update.
Reporters Without Borders has called on a public service radio corporation in the state of Ondo, in southwestern Nigeria, to reinstate nine journalists who were suspended indefinitely on 21 January at the governor's behest because of their coverage of an opposition protest about an increase in the prices of petroleum products. The Ondo State Radiovision Corporation (OSRC) claimed that the decision to suspend the journalists was taken internally, by the corporation's management, because they dedicated too much air-time to the protest by the opposition Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
A specialist Internet training and advocacy portal has been launched to help African journalists work even after they have been forced into exile, or have otherwise been muzzled by oppressive regimes. The African Journalists in Exile (JAFE) Web site seeks to provide persecuted African journalists with a global networking forum by linking to online resources, media freedom advocacy organisations, sympathetic media and self-help groups.
A photographer with "Le Patriote", a daily that is close to the opposition, and two other journalists were recently assaulted by members of Ivoirian President Laurent Gbagbo's presidential guard.
Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court postponed to 18 February a hearing on appeals by the Media and Information Commission (MIC) and the Minister of Information Jonathan Moyo to have The Daily News and The Daily News on Sunday shut down again. On 26 January the Supreme Court declined to grant an interdict sought by the MIC barring the newspaper company from publishing. Chief Justice Chidyausiku sitting in chambers, said that he could not issue the interdict sought by the MIC but had no problems with the appeal for the consolidation of these cases pending before the court. Two appeals were pending before the Supreme Court, both seeking an interdict stopping the ANZ from publishing.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Journalism for Tolerance Prize is about promoting tolerance, combating racism and discrimination and contributing to an understanding of cultural, religious and ethnic differences. The Prize is an annual competition among journalists from all sectors of media with a simple objective: to promote better understanding among journalists from all communities of the importance of tolerance and defence of human rights, particularly when it comes to reporting on minorities.
Worldwide, partners and stakeholders value the sharing of information and experiences on Conservation Agriculture (CA). This has been demonstrated and achieved in the First and Second World Congresses on Conservation Agriculture (Spain, 2001 and Brazil, 2003). The World Congress on Conservation Agriculture is acknowledged as an effective forum. Hence, the second World Congress gave the mandate to Africa to organize and host the Third World Congress on Conservation Agriculture (III WCCA).
For the last nine years, Manchester Metropolitan University has hosted a series of very successful annual international conferences on 'ALTERNATIVE FUTURES and POPULAR PROTEST'. A Tenth conference will be held from 6th-8th April 2004. The Conference aim is to explore the dynamics of popular movements, along with the ideas which animate their leaders and supporters and which contribute to shaping their fate.
Election Talk from the Electoral Institute for Southern Africa is available in both electronic format and hard copy. It will now appear fortnightly to give the latest briefing on the forthcoming elections in the SADC region. These policy briefs are written by regional experts to give you a succinct overview on the latest developments in those countries holding elections in 2004.
Women's Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace (WLP) is an international, non-governmental organisation (NGO) that empowers women and girls in the Global South to re-imagine and re-structure their roles in their families, communities, and societies. WLP's quarterly eNewsletter features interviews with prominent women leaders and updates on WLP's programs implemented in cooperation with our partner organisations.
The African Cup of Nations kicks off in Tunisia, with 16 nations taking part - and all eyes on the continent are looking north. Seen from space, Africa is one huge and undivided landmass. But for some on the continent, however, the widely-held perception is of two very different regions; Africa south of the Sahara desert, or sub-Saharan Africa, and north Africa. This article on the website of the BBC questions the nature of African identity and is followed by comments on the subject from around the world.
According to IADB, total remittances are due to surpass foreign direct investment as a source of capital for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2003. The total aggregate of remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean during this decade is conservatively projected to reach more than $450 billion. In order to better understand these developments at the micro level, this paper presents findings of research into remittance sending and receiving from some 12,000 individuals in the United States and Latin America.
Taking a close look at remittances flowing into Latin America from US-based migrants, this report’s main recommendation to all governments in the region is to “do no harm”: “To begin with, governments (and nongovernmental organizations as well) need to recognize that these resources are private. They belong to the individuals who earned them, and who have every right to transfer them freely to other family members. No one else has a claim on them. And these resources are certainly being put to good use. Remittances are providing enormous benefits to recipients, their families, and their communities.”
“Africa and its people living outside the continent are united through blood ties, cultural affinity and shared history, and to some extent, a common destiny. Since the forced migration of millions of young and able bodied men, women and children of Africa to work in plantations and other early economic activities of the emerging Western frontier in the Western Hemisphere, the quest to establish strong partnerships and linkages between the same people separated by hundreds of years, oceans or environmental circumstances, have remained unabated, although with minimal degrees of success.”
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) runs MIDA, a capacity-building programme, which helps to mobilize competencies acquired by African nationals abroad for the benefit of Africa's development. See also “Partnership for Brain Gain and Capacity Building in Africa” http://www.iom.int/africandiaspora/default.htm
Through its digital diaspora initiative, Unifem is setting up the E-quality Fund for African Women and Innovation. Unifem Director Noeleen Heyzer launched an appeal for an E-quality fund during the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Gender Caucus high level panel.
"The process of globalisation has been affecting the Indian society in various ways. Though it is primarily an economic phenomenon, its impact in other walks of life is being strongly felt and there seems no possibility of its disappearance. Taking the northwest region of India as the focus of analysis, this volume brings together sixteen contributions made by the scholars working in this area to focus on four issues, namely, identity formation, development, gender and the diaspora.
"Within the large perspective of each aspect that has been examined, various issues and controversies have been provided scholarly treatment. In the backdrop of the fact that globalisation is here to stay, the issue of how to handle it so as to benefit from its positive aspects is a normative one that requires certain policy measures. In the process, the political economy of development and the role of the state have remained the major focus of investigation. The transnationalisation of the Indians has gained recognition in the light of the recent announcement by the Prime Minister that the government was taking into consideration the issue of granting dual citizenship to diasporic Indians. The growth in the studies on the Indian diaspora has also lent credence to the view that diaspora communities are important components of the globalisation process." (jacket)
* Edited by Paramjit S. Judge, S.L. Sharma, Satish K. Sharma and Gurpreet Bal
New Delhi, Rawat, 2003, x, 302 p., tables, $30. ISBN 81-7033-811-5
AFFORD, the African Foundation for Development (http://www.afford-uk.org), will be partnering Pambazuka News in producing News from the Diaspora. If you would like to contribute information to this section, email your news to [email protected].
This generation has seen a mushrooming of the so called ‘Good Will Ambassadors and Advocates’ on issues of both national and international concern. These people have been people of high standing as regards their offices like Presidents, Ministers, Members of Parliament and indeed are a sort of celebrity.
Malawi has also witnessed this trend and recently UNICEF-Malawi office accorded the current ‘Miss Malawi’ and our great musician from ‘Zembani Band’ to be their advocates for this good cause: a fight against HIV/AIDS to encourage behaviour change among youth.
What is of concern to me is that most, if not all, times these so called celebrities and top officials have ‘good rhetoric babblings’ on the issues BUT needless to say that they do not practice what they preach. If we talk about behaviour change amongst youth it is not just a song but a life that those who are on the platform have to start living like that. Remember people see. Let the youth not be taken for granted!
This has not only affected the HIV/AIDS cause, but even issues of child labour. We hear advocates calling for a halt in employing under aged children on a job, but their estates are full of the same.
The message is let us be exemplary in our advocacy attempts: Advocacy without action is a noise of an empty tin.
We would like to receive regular editions of your respectable news bulletin. We are a writer’s association and believe your publication will be an invaluable collection to our writers, who include journalists. Please keep us informed also about coming events relating to journalism, development conferences and everything worthy.
Around the world, commemorations of the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide are about to be launched. The central actors responsible for allowing Hutu extremists to perpetrate the genocide are well known: the government of France, the United Nations Security Council led by the USA with British backing, the UN Secretariat, the government of Belgium, and, by no means least, the Roman Catholic Church. The Organization of African Unity also refused to condemn the genocidaires and proved to be largely irrelevant throughout the crisis. As a consequence of these acts of commission and omission, 800,000 Tutsi and thousands of moderate Hutu were murdered in a period of 100 days. Reviewing the events of those days, I find myself thinking not once but repeatedly: It's almost impossible to believe that any of this actually happened. The following is a selection of some of those events. They, and the lessons they suggest, are worth bearing in mind as we who refuse to let the memory of the genocide dissipate begin our commemorations of the 10th anniversary.
1. Time and again in the months prior to and during the genocide, the Commander of the UN military mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) pleaded with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York to expand his very limited mandate. The only time his request was ever approved was in the days immediately after the Rwandan president's plane was shot down, triggering the genocide. UNAMIR was then authorized to exceed its narrow mandate exclusively for the purpose of helping to evacuate foreign nationals, mainly westerners, from the country. Never was such flexibility granted to protect Rwandans.
2. Heavily armed western troops began materializing at Kigali airport within hours to evacuate their nationals. Beyond UNAMIR's 2500 peacekeepers, these included 500 Belgian para-commandos, 450 French and 80 Italian troops from parachute regiments, another 500 Belgian para-commandos on stand-by in Kenya, 250 US Rangers on stand-by in Burundi, and 800 more French troops on stand-by in the region. None made any attempt to protect Rwandans at risk. Besides western nationals, French troops evacuated a number of well-known leaders of the extremist Hutu Power movement, including the wife of the murdered president and her family. All non-UNAMIR troops left within days, immediately after their evacuation mission was completed.
3. From the beginning of the genocide to its end, no government or organization other than NGOs formally described events in Rwanda as a genocide.
4. From beginning to end, all governments and official bodies continued to recognize the genocidaire government as the legitimate government of Rwanda.
5. The months of the genocide happened to coincide with Rwanda's turn to fill one of the non-permanent seats on the Security Council. Throughout those 3 months, the representative of the government executing the genocide continued to take that seat and participate in all deliberations, including discussions on Rwanda.
6. Almost all official bodies remained neutral as between the genocidaires and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the mostly Tutsi rebels in the civil war that was being fought at the same time as the genocide. As if they were morally equivalent groups, both the genocidaire government and those fighting to end the genocide were called upon by the UN, the Organization of African Unity and others to agree to a cease-fire. They did not call on the genocidaires to stop the genocide. Had the RPF agreed to a cease-fire, the scale of the genocide behind governemtn lines would have been even greater.
7. Only days after the genocide began, 2500 Tutsi as well as Hutu opposition politicians crowded into a Kigali school known as ETO, where Belgian UN troops were billeted; at least 400 of them were children. They were seeking protection against menacing militia and government soldiers outside the compound. In the midst of the stand-off, the Belgian soldiers were ordered to depart ETO to assist in evacuating foreign nationals from the country. They did so abruptly, making no arrangements whatever for the protection of those they were safeguarding. As they moved out, the killers moved in. When the afternoon was over, all 2500 civilians had been murdered.
8. After 10 Belgian UN soldiers were killed by Rwandan government troops the day after the Rwandan President's plane was shot down, Belgium withdrew all its troops from the UN mission. So that Belgium would not alone be blamed for scuttling UNAMIR, its government then strenuously lobbied the UN to disband the mission in its entirety.
9. Two weeks after the crisis had begun, with information about the magnitude of the genocide increasing by the day, the Security Council did come very close to shutting down UNAMIR altogether. Instead, led by the USA and the United Kingdom, it voted to decimate the mission, reducing it from 2500 to 270.
10. After the deaths of 18 American soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, the United States decided to participate in no more UN military missions. The Clinton administration further decided that no significant UN missions were to be allowed at all, even if American troops would not be involved. Thanks mostly to the delaying tactics of the US, after 100 days of the genocide not a single reinforcement of UN troops or military supplies had reached Rwanda.
11. Bill Clinton later apologized for not doing more to stop the genocide. However, his claim that his administration had not been aware of the real situation was a lie.
12. French officials were senior advisers to both the Rwandan government and military in the years leading to the genocide, with unparalleled influence on both. Virtually until the moment the genocide began, they gave unconditional support as well as considerable arms to the Hutu elite. Throughout the 100 days and long after, French officials and officers remained hostile to the “anglo-saxon” RPF, whose victory ended the genocide. To this day the French have never acknowledged their role nor apologized for it.
13. After 6 weeks of genocide, France, which offered no troops to the UN mission, suddenly decided to intervene in Rwanda. Within a week of the decision, Operation Turquoise was able to deploy 2500 men with 100 armored personnel carriers, 10 helicopters, a battery of 120 mm mortars, 4 Jaguar fighter bombers, and 8 Mirage fighters and reconnaissance planes---all for an ostensibly humanitarian operation. The French forces created a safe haven in the south-west of the country which provided sanctuary not only to fortunate Tutsi but also to many leading Rwandan government and military officials as well as large numbers of soldiers and militia---the very Hutu Power militants who had organized and carried out the genocide. Not a single person was arrested by France for crimes against humanity. All were allowed to escape across the border into then-Zaire, entirely unrepentant and often still armed. Predictably, these genocidaires were soon launching murderous excursions back into Rwanda, beginning a cycle that led to the subsequent bloody conflict that destabilizes central Africa still.
14. France long remained hostile to the post-genocide government in Rwanda and sympathetic to the previous French-speaking Hutu regime. Many of the leaders of the new government were from English-speaking Uganda and were considered the “anglo-saxon” enemy by the French government. In November 1994, barely four months after the end of the genocide, Rwanda was deliberately excluded from the annual Franco-African summit hosted by France. Zaire's President Mobutu, who had been ostracized by the French government in recent years, was invited, as was Robert Mugabe, the anglophone president of anglophone Zimbabwe.
15. The Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda was the largest and most influential denomination in the country, with intimate ties to the government at all levels. It failed to denounce the government's explicit ethnic foundations, failed to denounce its increasing use of violence against Tutsi, failed to denounce or even name the genocide, failed to apologize for the many clergy who aided and abetted the genocidaires, and to this day has never apologized for its overall role. The Pope has refused to apologize on behalf of the Church as a whole.
16. Within months of the end of the genocide, relief workers and representatives of the international community in Rwanda were telling Rwandans they must “Quit dwelling on the past and concentrate on rebuilding for the future” and insisting that “Yes, the genocide happened, but it's time to get over it and move on.”
17. George W. Bush, during the campaign for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, was asked by a TV interviewer what he would do as president if, “God forbid, another Rwanda” should take place. He replied: “We should not send our troops to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide outside our own strategic interest. I would not send US troops into Rwanda.”
18. The new Rwanda Patriotic Front government inherited a debt of close to $1 billion, some of it incurred by the previous government in genocide preparations---expanding its army and militias and buying arms. After the genocide, the RPF was obligated to repay in full the country's debt to its western lenders.
19. Following the genocide, the World Bank was left with a $160 million program of aid to Rwanda that it had extended to the previous government. . Even though the new government was penniless, the Bank refused to activate that sum until the new government paid $9 million in interest incurred by its predecessor. A Bank official told a UN representative: “After all, we are a commercial enterprise and have to adhere to our regulations. “ The sum was eventually paid by some donors.
20. In the first nine months after the genocide, the donor community provided $1.4 billion in aid to the Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire and Tanzania. Since, as was universally known, genocidaires had taken over the camps, a good part of these funds went to feed and shelter them and to fund their re-training and re-arming as they planned cross-border raids back into Rwanda. For Rwanda itself, while donor funds for reconstruction were generously pledged, in the first year after the genocide only $68 million was actually disbursed. To this day, Rwanda has never received reparations remotely commensurate with the damage that the international community had failed to prevent.
21. Once the genocide ended, the UN military mission was finally expanded. As UNAMIR II, it remained in Rwanda for almost two more years as a peacekeeping force, costing the UN $15 million a month. But the main challenge had become less one of peacekeeping and more one of peace-building--- the reconstruction of a totally devastated country. UNAMIR had the equipment, the skills and the will to play a major role in reviving the country's shattered structures. What it lacked was the mandate and modest funding from the Security Council to perform such a role. But UN headquarters never sought such authorization from the Security Council, nor did the Council ever initiate such a move.
22. When a UN mission leaves a country, it follows a formula to determine how much of its equipment should be left behind. UNAMIR owned much desperately needed equipment, from computers to vehicles to furniture. When the mission wrapped up in April 1996, both UN officials in Kigali and members of the Security Council urged UN headquarters to interpret the formula with maximum generosity and flexibility; they believed that 80% of all non-lethal equipment should remain in Rwanda. UN headquarters announced that 93% of all equipment was to be transported out of the country for storage or use elsewhere . After much pressure was applied, the UN bureaucracy decreed finally that 62% of all equipment be removed.
23. So far as is known, not a single person in any government or in the UN has ever been fired or held accountable for failing to intervene in the genocide. In fact, the opposite is true. Some careers flourished in the aftermath. Several of the main actors were actually promoted. We can consider this the globalization of impunity.
24. Despite the unanimity of every major study undertaken and in the face of the testimonies of survivors and the first-hand accounts of international humanitarian workers in Rwanda at the time, denial of the genocide persists. Deniers include Hutu Power advocates, many of them still active in western countries, as well as lawyers and investigators working for Hutu clients at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Denying the Rwandan genocide is the moral equivalent of denying the Holocaust.
* Gerald Caplan is the author of Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide (2000), the report of the International Panel of Eminent Personalities appointed by the Organization of African Unity to investigate the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the founder of "Remembering Rwanda: The Rwanda Genocide 10th Anniversary Memorial Project".
* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to
NOTE FROM PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORS: This year is the 10th Anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, an event that, as Gerald Caplan so succinctly summarises, was marked by the failure of the international community, complacency, neglect and, in some cases, outright collusion. An international campaign is underway to mobilise to mark this anniversary - "REMEMBERING RWANDA". As our contribution to this campaign, we will be featuring a section called Remembering Rwanda (see below). We also plan to publish a special issue on Rwanda in April 2004. Get involved! Organise an event in your institution, town, village or city. Send us information about what you are doing to commemorate the anniversary and to provide solidarity to the rebuilding of Rwanda."
* 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.
On the 19th January 2004, Monsanto SA (Pty) Ltd stunned South Africans when it announced that it was seeking a food and feed safety clearance for its genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready wheat to expedite future imports. This application must be seen against the backdrop to the fact that GM wheat is not grown commercially in any part of the world and is years away from regulatory approval in Canada and the United States of America (US) where research and experiments are still continuing and no approval has yet been granted.
Once Monsanto obtains such approval, the legislative weakness in the South African biosafety law expressly excludes future importers of Roundup Ready wheat from the need to obtain import permits. Biosafety oversight will in that event, effectively cease to exist. Such future importers of the Roundup Ready wheat would then have carte blanche to import the Roundup Ready wheat into South Africa, and thereby not have to comply with the biosafety oversight procedures in the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (Biosafety Protocol). Crucially, approval from the South African authorities will provide Monsanto with an enormous political coup to convince other African countries that its Roundup Ready GM wheat is “safe”. It will also go a long way towards laying the groundwork for control over the very lucrative wheat market in Africa.
In this context it is worth noting that Africa imports approximately 30 million tons of wheat per year. The US government has targeted Africa as a major market for its wheat, especially since competition from the European Union (EU) and Russia is not as fierce owing to dwindling wheat exports from these countries. The US expects its exports to climb to 30 million tons during 2004, an 8-year high, and “sales to Africa will be a major reason.”
Monsanto's Difficulties with obtaining approval in Canada and the US
Monsanto Canada and Monsanto Corporate have applied for regulatory approval for its Roundup Ready GM wheat in both the USA and Canada. However, to date, neither the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, nor Health Canada, have granted approvals for general cultivation and human safety respectively. Monsanto Canada's failure to obtain such approval is partly due to the groundswell of resistance from farmers and farmer organisations in Canada. Two years ago, the organic farmers of Saskatchewan filed a class action lawsuit to stop Roundup Ready wheat. On 27th May 2003, the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a farmer-controlled grain marketing agency called on Monsanto Canada to withdraw its environmental safety assessment. Recently, Agriculture Canada announced that it was abandoning its long running project involving GM wheat it had been developing in partnership with Monsanto. Jim Bole from the government Department of Agriculture Canada said that this decision reflected the concerns of Canada's wheat customers.
In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still in the throes of conducting a voluntary safety review of Monsanto Corporation's Roundup Ready wheat for human and animal consumption. Monsanto Corporation is still awaiting approval from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.) The FDA, USDA and EPA share regulatory oversight for GM crops in the US where there is no overarching comprehensive biosafety legislation.
Paying Lip Service to Biosafety
The central question that the South African government must answer, is what data exactly, will it use to consider, assess and evaluate Monsanto's application, particularly since the field trials and safety evaluations are still taking place in the US and Canada? Why is it that Monsanto is so confident so as to seek a food and feed safety clearance from the South African government? South Africa's bias in favour of GMOs is well documented. Its biosafety laws pays lip service to the notion public biosafety concerns. It has long since been described by environmental and development lawyers as showing “a cynical disregard for contemporary international and national environmental principles, as well as for the development imperatives of South Africa”. Monsanto's application also has implications for the integrity of the Biosafety Protocol. The First Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol will take place in Malaysia from 23rd to 27th February, a momentous event in global genetic engineering regulation since the Protocol entered into force only on 11th September 2003.
South Africa is a Party to the Biosafety Protocol but it has not yet revised its GMO Act, to give effect to the Biosafety Protocol. South Africa's Constitution does, however, make it clear that the Biosafety Protocol is binding on South Africa.
However, the safety approval sought by Monsanto is in respect of non-existent GM wheat, whereas the Biosafety Protocol applies to real situations of cross border trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and not to speculative trade in respect of non existent GMOs. An early decision now in favour of the import of Monsanto's GM wheat, relieves South Africa of the obligation later, to abide by the regulatory requirements of the Biosafety Protocol, including its critically important Precautionary Principle. Such a pre-emptive move by Monsanto is clearly calculated to undermine the spirit, intention, principles and objectives of the Biosafety Protocol.
Pre-emptive Bid For Control Over Lucrative African Wheat Market
Monsanto Corporation needs the lucrative African wheat market. Its loss widened to $97 million it its fiscal first quarter in 2003, and this excludes its $69 million goodwill write off related to its global wheat business. North Africa imports approximately 18 million tons of wheat per year, and Sub-Saharan Africa approximately 10 million tons. South Africa itself is a net wheat importer, having imported 1.2 million tons of wheat during 2003, owing to the worst crop in a decade. The provision of wheat as food aid is also an important factor for the push for the African wheat market. For instance, Ethiopia, the centre of diversity of wheat, imported 600, 000 of wheat last year as food aid from the US and EU.
Safety clearance will greatly assist Monsanto to convince key African importers who have already voiced concern over GM wheat, to accept it as being safe. Consider for example the following statements:
“On January 5, Algeria, which imports large amounts of durum wheat from the United States, announced that it would not import any genetically modified wheat. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are taking a similar tack with respect to wheat”
“If you have just one grain in a thousand which is genetically modified, the consumer is going to refuse it.”
Thus, it is evident from the above that the granting of the application sought by Monsanto will greatly assist it to capture the African wheat market. South Africa is hence, the entry point for the export of GE wheat into the rest of Africa that will be forced to succumb in a domino effect.
* Mariam Mayet is an environmental lawyer, with a BA, LLB, LLM (Wits) and heads the African Centre for Biosafety.
* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to
A “hideous cycle” of food shortages, poverty and HIV/AIDS in Zambia has left about one million children orphaned and a growing class of people destitute, aid agencies say. “The HIV/AIDS pandemic in Zambia deserves to be treated as an emergency which has and will continue to have impact on poverty and food security levels,” Lena Savelli, information officer for the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) in Zambia, told AlertNet.
Gaps in sexual and reproductive health care account for nearly one-fifth of the worldwide burden of illness and premature death, and one-third of the illness and death among women of reproductive age. These gaps could be closed and millions of lives saved with highly cost-effective investments, according to Adding It Up: The Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health Care, a new report released by The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. Policy makers, governments and donor agencies have vastly undervalued the diverse returns - economic and social as well as in health - such investments would bring, the report stresses. It calls for improvements in reproductive and sexual health essential to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals set by world leaders in 2000.
As the international community meets in New York on 5 and 6 February to discuss post-conflict reconstruction in Liberia, Amnesty International has urged that good governance, the rule of law and respect for human rights are given the highest priority. "Protracted conflict has not only destroyed the social and economic fabric of Liberia, it has also eroded the most fundamental human rights," Amnesty International said. "Unwavering political commitment and prompt, generous and sustained funding are needed to meet the ambitious plans for the next two years - not least for the protection and promotion of human rights," Amnesty International added.
"Recognizing that April 2004 is the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, the General Assembly:
1. Decides to designate 7 April 2004 as the International Day of Reflection on the genocide in Rwanda,
2. Encourages all Member States, organisations of the United Nations system and other relevant international organisations, as well as civil society organisations, to observe the International Day, including special observances and activities in memory of the victims of the genocide in Rwanda."
In Rwanda, a National Steering Committee has been formed to plan the commemoration for the 10th anniversary of the genocide in April. The Committee includes the government, Ibuka (the survivors’ association), Avega (the association of genocide widows), Africa Rights, Never Again (a students’ group), and Remembering Rwanda. The theme chosen for this year’s commemoration is “Preventing and abolishing Genocide through effective universal solidarity”. Remembering Rwanda is recommending that all its supporters adopt this theme as well, to signal our solidarity with the Rwandan Steering Committee. In Rwanda, April 7 is the date on which the 10th anniversary officially begins, and the subsequent week will be spent in a series of events of commemoration.
Visit the link provided for a listing of events related to the Remembering Rwanda campaign.
This is a film which deals with the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. The film ventures into the rural heart of the African nation of Rwanda to follow the first steps in one of the world's boldest experiments in political reconciliation: the Gacaca (Ga-CHA-cha) Tribunals. A full synopsis of the film is available at the web site provided.