PAMBAZUKA NEWS 106
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 106
Government and rebels battled in Ivory Coast's western borderlands Monday, threatening the stability of a unity government days after the insurgents joined it.
The four and a half year war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken more lives than any other since World War II and is the deadliest documented conflict in African history, says the International Rescue Committee. A mortality study released this week by the IRC estimates that since August 1998, when the war erupted, through November 2002 when the survey was completed, at least 3.3 million people died in excess of what would normally be expected during this time.
The yellow fever vaccine will be used for the first time by the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to inoculate some 700,000 children in 2003, the UN children's agency UNICEF said on Monday.
In a small, poorly lit classroom in Mtendeli refugee camp, western Tanzania, 20 Burundian and Tanzanian clinicians, midwives and HIV counsellors were on the final day of a three-day training course. They had been discussing HIV/AIDS and antenatal care, practising their counselling skills and learning about the pharmacology of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs.
President Joseph Kabila was sworn in as the interim head of state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at a ceremony in the capital, Kinshasa, on Monday, news agencies reported. Kabila will preside over a transitional government to be formed soon for a two-year period, leading up to democratic elections.
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* Rebels Declare Inauguration Invalid
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33373
There will be no elections in the disputed regions of Sool and Sanaag when Somaliland holds its presidential polls next week, according to the neighbouring self-declared autonomous region of Puntland.
The offices of an Ivorian human rights organisation, the Mouvement Ivoirien des Droits Humains (MIDH), were ransacked on Saturday by two armed men in plain clothing, MIDH sources told IRIN. According to the sources, the men went to the organisation's offices in the high-income Abidjan neighbourhood of Deux Plateaux a few minutes after the secretary arrived and asked her for an MIDH document issued on the previous day. They beat her up when she said she was not aware of the document, searched the premises for about 45 minutes and took some documents away.
Some members of Namibia's white population have begun a drive to improve race relations in the country and will start with a public apology for apartheid crimes. This emerged after representatives of the churches, trade unions, business and a "reconciliation broker" briefed President Sam Nujoma on the campaign.
The Five College African Scholars Program announces four and one-half month residency fellowships from January to May 2004 and August to December 2004. Junior and mid-level scholars, who are citizens of an African nation and who teach in African universities, are eligible to apply.
e-Africa - Journal of Governance and Innovation will be launched on May 1 by the South African Institute of International Affairs Johannesburg, South Africa (www.wits.ac.za/saiia ) . It will be a free e-publication to the leaders of nations, policy makers, key business and NGO people, academics and journalists across Africa. If you wish to receive a free copy of the journal please send an email with your name, job category, the name of the organisation you work for and your email address to [email protected] - in the subject line write: For e-Africa Subscription Database.
The Nigerian government and multinational oil companies should take immediate measures to prevent further violence and abuses around Warri in the oil-rich Niger delta, Human Rights Watch has said in letters to President Olusegun Obasanjo and the managing directors of three companies. Since March 13, 2003, clashes between the Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic groups in the Niger delta have claimed scores of lives. Human Rights Watch has received reports of government security forces firing indiscriminately on Ijaw villages, resulting in dozens of deaths.
Human Rights Watch is writing to express our serious concern about the widespread killings of civilians and other abuses being committed in the areas controlled by the Uganda military (UPDF) in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We therefore urge you to ensure that your military forces and those of all your allies in Ituri respect international humanitarian law and protect civilian lives.
With a population of over 120 million and many expatriate communities across the globe, the largest economy in West Africa, and great political importance in the region, the African continent, and the global stage, events which affect the stability and future of Nigeria affect the entire world. Elections, interrupted as they have been by periods of military dictatorship, have always contained potential for civil unrest, and so the good conduct of the forthcoming polls is a matter not only of international concern but also of symbolic importance for the citizens of Nigeria. This is according to a briefing on the upcoming 2003 Nigerian elections from the Centre for Democracy and Development, which provides a history of the politics in the country and examines other issues that include health, human rights and the environment.
With the very high expectations of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, one of the creditor-designed debt relief initiatives, The Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative, launched in 1996 by the IMF and World Bank, has failed to achieve the promised objective of a “robust exit from the burden of unsustainable debts” for developing countries. As a potential source of development finance, the debt relief through HIPC is not sufficient to guarantee poverty reduction in these countries let alone meet some of the goals of the MDGs. An analysis of key debt indicators shows that external debt and debt-servicing problems and poverty have become most severe and persistent in the heavily indebted poor countries, the so-called HIPCs, says Afrodad, a research, lobby and advocacy organisation, in a recent report.
The effective way to tackle the growing menace of human trafficking in Southern Africa is for governments to seize the assets of criminal organisations involved in the practice, suggests an expert. "Targeting the proceeds of crime is a very effective way of tacking syndicates," says Charles Goredema, a senior Researcher at the Johannesburg-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS).
South Africa's new Immigration Act has left too much discretion to police and immigration officials, and criminalised ordinary job seekers from neighbouring countries, the NGO Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) said on Tuesday. After several delays, amendments and last minute court challenges, the legislation replacing the Aliens Control Act was finally enacted on Monday evening.
If we are all starting to feel impatient about the war in Iraq after two weeks, then try to imagine how the 83,000 refugees at the Kakuma camp in north-west Kenya are feeling. Driven from Sudan, Somalia and half-a-dozen other countries by war and famine, some have been waiting for more than 10 years in this arid, remote region. The refugees at Kakuma depend on the UN High Commission for Refugees for housing, sanitation and schooling, and on the World Food Program for food. But the cash-strapped UNHCR is struggling to provide a basic level of services in the camp and the WFP is so short of food that it has cut the daily ration to 75 per cent of the minimum calorie requirement.
Some 220,000 internally displaced Sierra Leoneans were resettled in their areas of origin by the end of 2002, according to UN figures, officially ending the situation of internal displacement in the country and further consolidating its recovery after more than a decade of devastating civil war. But many IDPs returned to areas with no basic infrastructure or social services in place, creating acute humanitarian needs and causing some to drift back to urban areas. Resettlement assistance was only provided for registered IDPs, not for the many thousands who were either unregistered, or who did not wish to be resettled for various reasons. Homelessness in the urban districts of Freetown has become a serious problem. This is according to the latest update for the country by the Global IDP Project.
The can-do attitude of villagers in Magona near Thohoyandou in Limpopo has galvanised the Limpopo provincial government into investing more than R150 000 in the community. Premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi's office heard how villagers had raised funds to build a second high school so that children no longer had to walk 10km a day for their education. The funding was only enough to get the new school to foundation level.
Lets inform Africa through the dissemination of vital information in order to make Africa great.
The succulent Karoo, the fragile source of many of the trendiest plants found in fashionable shops and restaurants, is set to benefit from a massive $8m in conservation grants from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund. The fund is a joint initiative of Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the World Bank and the Japanese government.
"The fight against AIDS will need more resources from the US, with faster delivery, than what the President is proposing," says Dr. Paul Zeitz, Executive Director of the Global AIDS Alliance. "We will need fast action by Republican and Democratic leaders in the US Congress to deliver on an appropriate package for 2003 and 2004. It's very disappointing the President (George W. Bush) is not calling for a more rapid increase in new funding. Plus, it's troubling that the President gives such short shrift to the Global Fund, which is fast running out of resources."
The Kenya National Union of Teachers' (Knut) will launch a financial scheme to help members access drugs for HIV/AIDS. The scheme is part of Knut's efforts to fight the huge impact of the disease on its members, secretary-general Francis Ng'ang'a announced.
Treatment success and case detection rates for tuberculosis (TB) have improved appreciably in Africa since 1993 when the disease was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO), but the current indicators in the region still fall short of global targets, a WHO official has said in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The disarmament and peace process in Sierra Leone is getting new impetus from a pilot programme in four chiefdoms that encourages communities to turn in small arms in return for support for local development projects. The initiative will also strengthen national weapons control measures. It builds on progress in disarmament since the 1999 Lome peace accords and the Abuja ceasefire agreement the following year that ended a devastating civil war.
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) will fail if transparency and accountability do not form part of the process. This was the warning from Daryl Balia, the Chairperson of Transparency International South Africa. He was speaking to delegates at the African Investment Forum in Johannesburg.
"In Harare alone, more than 250 victims of violence have been seen and treated at the Emergency Departments in the City. More than 30 required admission for severe injuries, some requiring orthopaedic surgery. All the victims examined had physical injuries consistent with the histories given, which were of severe beatings and torture. To date about 200 people are known still to be in police custody, many with untreated injuries. Some of those tortured were electrocuted using wires attached to parts of the body, including the genitalia. Two women were assaulted with a rifle in their vaginas," according to a statement from The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, which noted with concern the increase of political violence in March.
Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has called on the Liberian authorities to search for four journalists who have been missing for more than two weeks in the country's eastern and central regions, where government forces are battling rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Development (LURD) movement. The missing journalists are Grody Dorbor, editor of "The Inquirer" newspaper, Oscar Dolo, Nyahn Flomo and William Quiwea, all local correspondents for the radio station Talking Drum Studio-Liberia.
The first South African troops forming part of a peace support mission to Burundi were due to leave for that country Wednesday, the SA National Defence Force said on Tuesday. They are to be accompanied by Major General Sipho Binda, the first commander of the African Union mission, which would also comprise troops from Mozambique and Ethiopia. Binda is to command a force of about 3200 soldiers, the SANDF said in a statement.
The Sager Fellowship for the Master of Arts degree in Sustainable International Development forges professional partnerships between ethnic communities to help identify and solve problems of underdevelopment. The SID Program is pleased to announce the 2003 Sager Fellowship competition for a young professional with a demonstrated commitment to conflict resolution and sustainable development in Rwanda. The Sager Fellow will concentrate on theory and analytical skills during the year in residence at Brandeis University, and then spend the second year in a supervised internship or field project.
An upsurge of politically motivated violence is threatening the legitimacy of impending elections in Nigeria, Human Rights Watch has charged in a 39-page report, “Testing Democracy: Political Violence in Nigeria,” which documents numerous cases of political violence across Nigeria and discusses the weak response by government and police to date. Starting with local government primaries for the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in 2002, Nigeria has seen an increase in violent clashes between political factions led by politicians and their supporters at all levels of government.
Kenyan president Emilio Mwai Kibaki, who was elected in December 2002, has instructed his lawyers to file contempt-of-court charges against two private dailies. The charges stem from stories that appeared in the March 31 editions of the independent East African Standard and the Kenya Times about a court case filed against President Kibaki by the local gas station chain Nyota Services Ltd. The company's owner alleges that Kibaki and other senior members of the ruling National Rainbow Coalition bought gas for their cars on credit and now owe the company a total of 10 million Kenyan shillings.
Zanu PF and the Mugabe regime are clearly in a state of desperate panic. They are failing to find ways to challenge the moral authority and increasing popularity of the MDC. The success of the recent two-day stay away demonstrated that the MDC in the eyes of the people is the legitimate authority in Zimbabwe. The landslide victories by the MDC in the Kuwadzana and Highfield by-elections was symptomatic of the scale to which Mugabe and Zanu PF have been rejected by the people of Zimbabwe. When the people of Zimbabwe think of Zanu PF they think of hunger, insecurity and violence.
This posting by the Africa Policy E-Journal of Africa Action contains the executive summary of a new white paper from Physicians for Human Rights, on the transmission of HIV in Africa through unsafe medical care, including unsafe injections and blood transfusions. The paper concludes that AIDS prevention efforts need to take into account significant evidence that transmission through unsafe medical care has been significantly underestimated, and urgently recommends increased investment in adequately protecting blood supplies, preventing re-use of needles for injections, and taking other health care precautions that are considered standard in developed countries.
The Kubatana Project manages Kubatana.net, a website portal that provides Zimbabwean Civil Society organisations with an online presence and a platform to voice their concerns about human rights abuses in their country.
Many important services are still not accessible to people with disabilities in Namibia, says a released report. The study found that only about 25 per cent of Namibian schools are accessible to disabled children while around 38, 6 per cent of disabled children older than five years have never attended school.
Business-to-business e-commerce applications are being promoted as tools that will enable producer firms in developing countries to reduce their costs substantially, thereby easing their access to global markets. Internet-based business-to-business e-commerce, the argument goes, should help producers in developing countries obtain better information on global markets and give them direct access to new customers.
The Internet is not likely to replace traditional media in the foreseeable future, according to SA's media owners. However, they say the Internet and digital devices can offer significant value in adding to the ‘out of home' delivery of content. This emerged at an International Communications Forum conference hosted by Telkom in Cape Town.
This report aims to provide insight into issues related to communication of HIV/Aids to children in the 3-12 year age group, with an emphasis on South Africa. The document focuses on identifying key issues related to children and HIV/Aids, including discrimination, grief, knowledge, attitudes and practices. It also attempts to determine what programmes have been implemented, both media and non-media, with regard to children and HIV/Aids.
The Global Information Technology Report is the most comprehensive assessment of networked readiness and its effects on economic growth and productivity. As the world experiences an economic slowdown, the report highlights that the use and application of information and communication technologies remain among the most powerful engines of growth.
This site presents the results of a survey of business responses to HIV/Aids in South Africa. The results are presented along subject divisions such as prevention, treatment and care, surveillance and monitoring, legal and human rights and company strategy.
The Internet and other interactive media continue to penetrate more and more deeply all world society, and provide a means for instantaneous personal dialogue and communication across the globe. The collective power of texting, blogging, instant messaging, and email across millions of actors cannot be overestimated. Like a mind constituted of millions of inter-networked neurons, the social movement is capable of astonishingly rapid and sometimes subtle community consciousness and action. Read about the emerging second super power of online activists.
President Ismaïl Omar Guellah of Djibouti is supporting a national strategy to move the country, strategically located on the Horn of Africa at the mouth of the Red Sea, into the digital age by 2010 to promote development and reduce poverty.
It is nearly eight years since the Internet was first introduced in Kenya. Though the technology is changing the way consumers and businesses communicate, the number of dial-up subscribers is yet to hit 50,000. So if the technology is that revolutionary, what has prevented the Internet from getting a mass market acceptance?
This week marked the ninth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, in which over the course of 100 days in 1994, beginning April 7, up to a million people were killed in a government-orchestrated ethnic cleansing campaign. (http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,6119,2-11-1447_1343628,00.html) As part of its work in monitoring the implementation of the gacaca trials, a traditional system of justice being used to bring those involved in the killings to justice, the human rights organisation African Rights has compiled a written record of the history of the 1994 genocide in 12 original pilot sectors. This first report is devoted to sector Gishamvu, Nyakizu district in Butare, which began hearings in June 2002. Based upon the collective testimony given by groups of residents who were present during the genocide - prisoners, survivors and local people who witnessed how the killings unfolded - the report aims to reflect a broad consensus on what happened. Click on the link provided for an extract from the report, information on the work of African Rights, a listing of publications from African Rights and their contact details.
Swazi Minister of Information Abednego Ntshangase this week announced a new censorship policy for the state-owned electronic media, raising concerns about the validity of a bill of rights promised in an upcoming palace-written constitution.
A multilateral human rights committee has praised Mali for progress made in the area of human rights but has asked it to provide information on various issues, including developments since the end of a rebellion by Tuareg nomads in the 1990s in the north of the country.
A special body spearheaded by the president has been created to step up Madagascar's HIV/AIDS prevention drive. Malagasy President Marc Ravalomanana, who is leading the initiative, will oversee a technical committee to implement the country's HIV/AIDS campaign.
Allegations of misuse of debt-relief funds have emerged in Zambia, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told IRIN on Tuesday. Zambia is one of the least developed countries which qualify for the Highly-Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt-relief programme of the IMF and World Bank.
Humanitarian agencies have been allowed access to refugee and IDP camps close to the Liberian capital, Monrovia, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its weekly situation report of 1-7 April.
The Canadian government has pumped more than R1,2 million into a water and sanitation studies project to be run at the Lovedale Public FET College. A Canadian delegation presented the study course to the college council. After two years the college will have to carry the project on its own.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has identified six states - Bayelsa, Delta, Plateau, Nassarawa, Rivers and Taraba as potential trouble spots in the forthcoming general elections beginning this weekend.
A 50-man team of election observers from 11 countries in Africa, Europe and North America has arrived in Nigeria for the forthcoming state and federal elections beginning this weekend, the National Democratic Institute announced.
Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) founder member Edward Mavundla, who died on Wednesday an hour before Aids activists arrived to visit him, made a deathbed call for world support for the organisation. "I am urging the people all over the world to support (the) TAC to show solidarity with South Africa -- we (the HIV-positive) are dying," Mavundla said on Tuesday night, shortly before he died, according to a transcript of his last statement released by TAC lawyer Nathan Geffen on Wednesday.
"We have just seen on television images of the brutal way in which the United states and Britain are murdering Iraqis....It must be said that this war, of which no sensitive or sane person can be proud, is a barbaric war," said an editorial in the Lusaka Post in March. Visit this web page to read about how newspapers around the African continent responded to the invasion of Iraq.
There are two planet earths. One of them is the complex, morally challenging world in which we live, threatened by ecological collapse. The other is the one we see on the wildlife programmes. Except for a few shots of animals doing amusing things in people's gardens, and, occasionally, an indigenous person, stripped of his T-shirt, wildlife programmes present the natural world as a pristine wilderness, unaffected by humanity, says this commentary from the Guardian UK.
Following the Monterrey conference on Financing for Development, a number of official discussions are underway about changing the governance regime of international institutions. Civil society organisations and others have long pointed out that the World Bank and IMF - whose 2003 Spring meetings are taking place in Washington DC on 12-13 April- wield enormous power over developing country governments, yet have severe shortcomings in their legitimacy and effectiveness.
Robert Mugabe's government has committed severe human rights abuses against the opposition party, has actively repressed the press and the judiciary and is largely responsible for the famine that is currently gripping Zimbabwe, according to a Commonwealth report distributed to heads of government this week.
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* SADC Grills Mudenge
http://allafrica.com/stories/200304040682.html
* Opposition Leadership Face Crackdown
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When Nigeria, proud holder of the title of the most populous nation in Africa, goes to the polls this weekend it will be watched keenly from across a troubled continent, analysts say. "For the outside world, including Africa, a successful election in Nigeria suggests that we are heading in the right direction," says John Adeleke, head of the World Trade Centre Association's Nigeria office.
Like many all over the world, I have spent the last days and weeks and months in great agony, as the current assault and massacre of Law, Justice and Humanity by the most rapacious imperial power on earth has unfolded. Death, destruction, and human misery have turned into celluloid images analysed and dissected by retired majors and "embedded" journalists with utter cynicism and shameless glee while exhorting the virtues of precision bombing. Shame itself is ashamed as marines descend from their tanks to throw water bottles to traumatised thirsty Iraqis while tanks fire at Basra's water plants. In this state, I am finding it impossible to intellectualise on Re-making Law in Africa and muse over Law and Justice in the 21st century. Law, Justice and Liberation have all been murdered! How can we resurrect them?
The over 120 observers who attended a 3-day Forum on the Electoral Process in Africa have suggested the establishment of a common elections development bank into which all African countries will contribute material and financial resources to promote the independent financing of elections on the continent. They suggested that this will "help reduce over dependence on foreign aid for elections which, in some cases, goes a long way to compromise 'the sovereignty of African nations."
As African leaders and business executives gather in South Africa's commercial capital Johannesburg on Monday for a three-day dialogue within the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), African businesswomen say the ”gender blind” blueprint needs a major overhaul to benefit women.
Mr. Michael Carmichael of the Oxford Centre for Public Affairs criticizes Pambazuka News (Issue 104), the western media and Amnesty International for failing to highlight as an example of political persecution the ongoing treason trial of MDC opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Amnesty International is concerned at the apparently politically motivated charges against Mr. Tsvangirai that have been roundly condemned by the international community, including Canada, and with insuring that he receives a fair trial. The lead work of the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London is complemented by the campaigning activities of its various country sections worldwide. The Canadian Section (English Speaking) of Amnesty International has established a Zimbabwe Webpage (http://www.amnesty.ca/zimbabwe)containing press releases, reports and actions on Zimbabwe and has twinned a number of Canadian Members of Parliament with at-risk Zimbabwean Members of Parliament in a joint campaign with Oxfam Canada.
Mr. Bill Casey, one of the twinned Canadian Members of Parliament, called on the government of Canada to insure that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police provide Mr. Tsvangirai's lawyers with any information obtained in its investigation of Ari Ben Menashe, the lead prosecution witness against Mr. Tsvangirai who secretly recorded their meeting in Montreal, Canada in which Mr. Tsvangirai allegedly sought assistance in eliminating Mr. Mugabe. In reply, the Minister of Foreign Affairs assured Mr. Casey that all available information would be forwarded to Mr. Tsvangirai's lawyers via the Canadian High Commission ("Canada comes to MDC defence", Daily News, 5 March 2003).
The Secretary General of AI Canada testified before a Parliamentary Sub-Committee on March 26 and called on the Canadian government to step up its monitoring and condemnation of human rights violations in Zimbabwe, including by way of observation of the trials of Tsvangirai and other MDC leaders. The Canadian High Commissioner to Zimbabwe indicated that he has been observing the Tsvangirai trial.
The Canadian Section (English Speaking) is but one of hundreds of Amnesty International country sections around the world campaigning to address human rights violations wherever they occur. Mr. Carmichael may rest assured that Amnesty International is doing its best to address the plight of Morgan Tsvangirai and ordinary Zimbabweans who face political violence in seeking to exercise their democratic rights.
Oxfam called this week for the world’s top decision makers to launch a war on poverty by increasing aid for education allowing millions of children to receive a basic education. What we need is a war on poverty,” said Phil Twyford, Director of Advocacy, Oxfam International, “For much less than the price of a stealth bomber you could tackle the education crisis in 10 of the world’s poorest countries and get five million children into school.”
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) peer review mechanism (PRM) is a voluntary process and nine countries have already signed up for the review, Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu, the chairman of the Nepad Steering Committee, said on Wednesday. "Ghana is likely to be the first candidate of the peer review mechanism. We should appoint the independent panel of experts in the next two months and the process should start shortly thereafter," Nkuhlu said.
Thousands of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia are to be moved away from the border area which separates the two countries, the UN told IRIN on Thursday. The move follows increasing calls that the refugees, who fled Eritrea during the bitter two-year border war, should be moved from the Wa'ala Nihibi camp - some 20 km from the existing border - for their "protection and emotional safety".
The rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has reportedly said the Ugandan government must declare an unconditional ceasefire before it will nominate a peace negotiating team.
In early April a group of highly skilled international ICT-consultants called eRiders will start their journey to various countries inside Southern Africa. Over the next four months, the eRiders will be addressing the technology needs of over thirty non-profit organisations in the SADC region.
We are all seized with the war in Iraq. On the humanitarian side, the World Food Programme has launched what may become the largest single humanitarian operation in history -- a massive intervention covering logistics, food and communications totaling $1.3 billion over six months. Reports vary on how much food Iraq's 27 million people now have. Earlier, the Iraqi Government announced that several months worth of food had been distributed, while our own national staff that has monitored the Oil for Food Program for the last decade put the figure at about a month's supply for the average family. We are all deeply concerned.
But as we meet today, there are nearly 40 million Africans in greater peril. They are struggling against starvation -- and, I can assure you, these 40 million Africans, most of them women and children, would find it an immeasurable blessing to have a month's worth of food. As much as I don't like it, I cannot escape the thought that we have a double standard. How is it we routinely accept a level of suffering and hopelessness in Africa we would never accept in any other part of the world? We simply cannot let this stand.
Commitments to humanitarian aid are political choices and this Council is the most important political forum in the world. There is so much each of you can do to focus the attention and resources on the food crises now engulfing much of sub-Saharan Africa. We must never again witness a famine of the proportions seen in Ethiopia in 1984/85. Up to 1 million people died in that famine -- losses far greater than most wars. Ironically, much of the assistance that might have saved them simply arrived too late -- thousands of tons of food were unloaded just as Ethiopian families were burying their dead.
The causes of Africa's food crises remain as I described them in December - a lethal combination of recurring droughts, failed economic policies, civil war, and the widening impact of AIDS, which has damaged the food sector and the capacity of governments to respond to need. The scale of the suffering is unprecedented. The World Food Programme must somehow find $1.8 billion this year just to meet emergency food needs in Africa. That is equal to all the resources we were able to gather last year for our projects worldwide and more than the biennial budget of the UN Secretariat here in New York.
Thus far, we remain nearly $1 billion short.
Continuing funding shortfalls for food emergencies in the DPRK and Afghanistan and future demands in Iraq further darken the outlook for Africa. Last year, global food aid continued to plummet, dipping below 10 million metric tons -- down from 15 million in 1999. My colleagues at FAO have found that chronic hunger is actually rising in the developing world outside China and the World Health Organization announced that hunger remains the world's number one threat to health.
Until recently it seemed that our appeals for help were just not getting through. But I have some encouraging news. First, the Secretary General has made the issue of African hunger -- especially as it relates to AIDS -- very much his own and that has energized and encouraged all of us. Second, France and the United States are working together to put African food crises on the agenda of the upcoming G8 meeting to be hosted by President Chirac in Evian in June. President Bush has announced the creation of a new $200 million fund to prevent famine and we hope that will be a down payment on a broader political commitment by the G8 and others to address food emergencies in Africa.
I will return to the G8 meeting a little later on and share some of our thinking on the kinds of commitments needed to deal better with food crises. But first I would like to share some information on my recent trip to southern Africa as the Secretary General's Special Envoy and our outlook on the current food security situation in Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Sahel and West Africa. The largest single threat to Africa's food security remains drought in a continent where irrigation is rare, but AIDS, failed economic policies and political violence also have major roles in different regions.
Southern Africa In southern Africa, and to a lesser degree in the Horn of Africa, the impact of AIDS on the political and economic structure grows daily. In January, I returned to the region along with Stephen Lewis, who is the Secretary General's Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa. We were struck by the impact the disease was having on both governance and the food sector, and how the two were intertwined. Much of Africa's political and technical talent is dying or emigrating, a huge depletion of Africa's human resources. Mr. Lewis often recounts how one Minister of Agriculture met recently with a delegation of nearly a dozen representatives of the European Union. The Minister arrived at the meeting alone, explaining to the delegation that all his immediate staff was either ill or already lost to AIDS. Out in rural villages, lands lie fallow because there is no one to farm them and more than 7 million African farmers have lost their lives to AIDS.
It is not hard to imagine where all of this is heading. The peak impact of the AIDS pandemic has not yet arrived in southern Africa and is not expected until 2005-2007. Political structures at the national level in the worst affected countries may gradually just fade away and, along with them, the services and social order they were intended to provide. Many of these governments grew out of the artificial political demarcations left by colonial powers and as political cohesion loosens, the potential for civil conflicts along the lines of those we see today in the Congo and Cote d'Ivoire grow more likely.
Even if governments succeed in maintaining a fair degree of central control and political cohesion, basic services and their economies are bound to suffer. How do you turn around food production in a country that no longer has a viable agricultural extension service? How do rural children learn to farm when their parents are too sick to teach them? How do you maintain a basic educational system for children when their teachers are dying faster than new ones can be trained? President Mwanawasa of Zambia told me that they were losing 2000 teachers a year to AIDS and were able to train only
1000 a year to replace them.
Yet there are some encouraging developments as well. The latest nutritional survey by our colleagues at UNICEF show that we have been able to block a rise in malnutrition among children under five. Thus far, more than 620,000 tons of emergency food has been distributed to more than 10 million people in the region. Donors have been very generous, especially the United States, European Union, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
The GM food issue has faded and is no longer delaying and disrupting deliveries. Five of the six countries needing aid in southern Africa are accepting processed and milled GM foods. We simply could not have reached the level of food deliveries we have now attained without the constructive problem solving undertaken.
But it would be foolish to say this crisis is over. Crop prospects are better, but more droughts are forecast and we are confronted with the real possibility of a permanent, low-grade food crisis created by AIDS. Women and girls are especially hard-hit by the disease, accounting for 60 percent of the cases and in Africa eight out of ten farmers are women. The impact is obvious. Right now all the UN agencies who have been involved in this humanitarian effort -- UNICEF, FAO, WHO, OCHA, UNDP and WFP -- are working on both short and long term strategies to address the impact of this pandemic on issues like governance, social services, and the food economy.
WFP remains especially concerned about Zimbabwe where there have been numerous media reports that food assistance is being politicized. We are confident that this is not the case for our food and in the few instances where we have received credible reports of abuse we suspended those operations, I have met with President Mugabe a number of times and we have offered the services of the UN to monitor and verify the food being distributed by the government there, but have not yet received a positive response. Inflation, government monopolization of the food sector and the impact of the land redistribution scheme likely mean that the food situation will not stabilize any time soon in Zimbabwe. Our goal is not to politicize, but to depoliticize food aid in Zimbabwe. Food should be available to all based on humanitarian principles with any other consideration being inappropriate. That is the case everywhere we work. Hungry people cannot afford to be caught in political crossfire. There are those who would have us pull out in crisis situations to punish governments and take a stand on political or human rights issues. But WFP believes that emergency aid simply cannot be politicized -- for good or ill.
When people in power, be they government or rebels, deny food aid to certain vulnerable groups of the population, we will speak out. While we see our role as neutral and much like the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, our member states have also asked us to be advocates for the hungry. That has put us on a tightrope and in a perpetual balancing act. When governments take economic actions such as banning private trade or monopolizing food imports that undermine the food sector and exacerbate hunger, our member states expect us to speak out and we will.
* What do you think about the statements made by James Morris on Iraq? How do you feel about the fact that enormous amounts of money have been spent on invading Iraq, when a fraction of that money could have been used to save lives in Africa? What are your thoughts about the fact that because Iraq has been destroyed by 12 years of sanctions and bombings, billions will be needed to rebuild it, diverting much needed aid away from Africa? Send your comments to [email protected]
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 105
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 105
Liberian Defense Minister Daniel Chea has announced that government forces have retaken the central provincial town of Gbarnga. Mr Chea said that between 13 and 15 government soldiers and more than 100 rebels were killed in the counter-attack which, according to him, has put the rebels on the run.
An armed group of eight men broke into the Port Harcourt home of Ledum Mitee on March 22, searching for him unsuccessfully. Mitee is president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and has been a strong critic of the Rivers State government. Human Rights Watch said the attack highlights the need for additional efforts to protect government critics in the crucial pre-election period.
Traditionally hunter-gatherers, the Batwa forest peoples of Rwanda are recognized as having been the first inhabitants of the land. Yet the Batwa have been forced to the edges of their ancestral forests. With no compensation and no alternative forms of livelihood, most have become beggars and landless labourers. This study from Minority Rights International highlights the plight of the Batwa and the need for allocated lands to allow them to preserve their culture, values and traditional livelihoods.
Children are being abducted in record numbers in northern Uganda by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Human Rights Watch says in a new report. The children are subjected to brutal treatment as soldiers, laborers and sexual slaves. Since June of 2002, an estimated 5,000 children have been abducted-a striking increase from 2001, when fewer than 100 children were abducted.
The government has established a database of corrupt businesses that departments are banned from using, while a plan for the blacklisting of corrupt employees from the public service has been approved. While the blacklisted companies are published on the Treasury website, legal issues around banning corrupt employees still have to be resolved, according to a government progress report on its anti-corruption measures.
An inquiry into President Robert Mugabe's land reforms in Zimbabwe has uncovered massive corruption in the allocation of farms seized from white farmers, ostensibly for the resettlement of landless black peasants. The black farmers, originally resettled on the farms, are being evicted to pave the way for Mr Mugabe's cronies, many of whom own up to five farms.
Africa is facing a water and sanitation crisis. An estimated one in three Africans do not have access to adequate water supply and sanitation facilities. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 40% of people lack access to a safe water supply and almost half suffer from water related diseases. In the face of these statistics, can the water and sanitation goals be met in Africa?
The value of international summits and forums and the high costs of organising such events were questioned by many participants at the end of the 3rd World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan. Critics say the expected outcome and activity plans of such international events do not justify the huge amount of money pumped into organising them. They argue that the money would be much better used in achieving the Millennium and World Summit on Sustainable Development targets set in Johannesburg last year.
Corporate globalisation continues to wreck havoc in Southern Africa. It is characterized by deregulation of markets, trade liberalization and dumping of harmful products in poor countries. It includes privatization of essential public utilities, immobility of labour; diehard paragons of this job-killing doctrine such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the United States of America, the World Trade Organisation and transnational corporations, define as a process of restructuring the world economy.
I read your article “Diamonds: Forever or For Good? The Economic Impact of Diamonds in Southern Africa” with interest. Whilst I agree with a lot of what Ralph Hazleton wrote, I fear that he has let Botswana off the hook a bit too much.
Ian Taylor, University of Botswana
Despite having only standard five as an education qualification and living under sordid conditions of abject rural poverty; there is no force that can stop the hard-working and strong-willed Willy Manganyi from brilliantly strumming his guitar. He is making indigenous African music that soothes the soul of a nation ripped to shreds by poverty, HIV/Aids, unemployment, prostitution, mis-education, inertia, jealousy, corruption and other social evils.
Tanzania will soon have a permanent voters' register, which may be used in the country's next general election in 2005. The Director of Elections of the country's National Electoral Commission (NEC), Rajab Kiravu, said in Dar es Salaam this week that the register would be ready by November
2004.
The human rights situation has not improved in either the north or rebel-held south of Sudan, according to Gerhart Baum, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Sudan. "I have seen no fundamental change since my last visit, in spite of further commitments by the government," he told a briefing at the UN Human Rights Commission last Friday.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, says the voluntary repatriation of Eritreans from Sudan is set to resume soon. The convoys, returning Eritrean refugees to their homeland, stopped last October due to military activity in the Kassala area of Sudan and the closure of the Eritrea-Sudan border.
A spokesman for TNG Prime Minister Hassan Abshir Farah said on Monday that Somalia's Transitional National Government was not planning to leave peace talks in Nairobi, Kenya, despite a meeting in Mogadishu at the weekend between the TNG and faction leaders. Ahmed Isse Awad, head of the prime minister's office, told IRIN the meeting was not an alternative to the Kenya conference. He described it as a consultative meeting to discuss ways of bringing stability to the Somali capital.
Somali women attending the ongoing peace conference in Nairobi, Kenya, have called for women's rights to be included in all stages of the peace process. Their call came at a three-day workshop for women delegates, supported by the regional body Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
The severely depleted food rations of refugees living in camps in Western Tanzania are to be increased slightly by mid-April, the World Food Programme announced. Aid agencies in the west of the country welcomed the 16 percent rise in caloric value of the rations, but refugees and local officials continued to voice their concerns over the lack of food in the camps.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has comfortably retained two parliamentary seats in the Zimbabwean capital after by-elections at the weekend. The weekend polls were described as largely peaceful by diplomats and the police, but marked by strong opposition claims of voter intimidation and ballot fixing.
Nigeria's Electoral Commission, Inec, last week announced that with 64 million voters registered, it was on course with preparations for next month's elections. Officers promised that providing there is security in the country, the vote would go ahead. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed is secretary to the Commission.
A coalition of political parties in Enugu State has petitioned the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Tafa Balogun alleging a plot to foment violence by the state government at the April elections using 135 senior and junior police officers aided by thugs.
The State Street Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Boston-based financial services company State Street Corporation, has announced 269 grants totaling more than $3.2 million through its Global Philanthropy Program during the fourth quarter of 2002. The grants bring the foundation's total giving in 2002 to $10.4 million.
Sweden on Friday announced it was giving nearly N$3 million to the Forum For the Future (FFF), a non-governmental organisation.
East London mum Sabrina Burton, 45, at the weekend became the first person in the Eastern Cape to take a 10 000 foot "jump for charity". Burton raised over R3000 for the South African Guide Dogs Association. Her "reward" was a tandem 10 000 foot leap of faith out of a plane with Jump for Charity (JFC) jump master Ralph Ridge.
I read with great interest the feature on developing African women's human rights and opportunities (Pambazuka News 103). I am a British male who has worked with Lesley Abdela of Eyecatcher/Shevolution for 25 years in the advance of women in politics. We believe that African women are Africa's only hope, not just Africa's best hope, because Africa is slipping back in economic, political and social development, not moving forward. Africa's women need political power or they will always be calling through the window at the men who hold power and misuse that power. Africa's women must seek at least parity (50%) in the Town Halls and Parliaments in every country. Holding power means the ability to decide what is best for your community. It means you can allocate available resources. It means you can start to suppress wrongs like domestic violence because you can change or introduce new legislation to fit the need. It means girls' rights can be enhanced, including equal access to education. It means women can decide how the economy should develop, including agriculture and small business. I can tell you, I have been in many countries with Lesley Abdela, conducting skills workshops for between 20 and 80 future women leaders, and I am completely certain that Africa's best hope for progress, stability and international acceptance will come when women are at least 50% of every Parliament, from Cape to Cairo!
Tim Symonds
Eyecatcher Associates/Shevolution
It is mid-morning, and terrified Ernest is charging as fast as he can toward Lake Nakuru in the heart of Kenya's scenic Rift Valley, sending a flock of pink flamingos squawking into flight. The 3-year-old white rhino is the target of wildlife authorities trying to capture him and take him to another game park hundreds of miles away. They are keen to revive the number of rhinos which were nearly wiped out in a poaching attack years ago.
This is an account of the fiasco I witnessed in the Remand hearing of MDC Vice President Gibson Sibanda MP. Sibanda and another Reggie Moyo appeared before Provincial Magistrate Masimba charged under the Public Order Security Act (POSA). Prosecutor Mary Zimba-Dube allowed bail of $20 000 for Moyo but declined to allow bail for Sibanda. Both were alleged to have violated the Act by organising last weeks successful stay away. The hearing finally got underway at 3:40pm after a day of arguments back and forth.
Zimba-Dube said the State were opposing bail out of the suspicion that Sibanda had pending cases (a disputed point) and that he would interfere with other witnesses still at large. Sibanda was defended by Josaphat Tshuma, who argued that the arguments were baseless. Zimbwa-Dube then stated that the State could not present their argument for a denial of bail as the investigating officer was unavailable. This despite the fact that the officer was one of a team of four, the other men being present. During the hearing, (4:20 pm) a man walked in and judging by the comments he appeared to be the 'unavailable' officer, Ngwenya. A man who only seems to posses one suit and is well known enough to have appeared on the list of notorious officers which appeared in The Standard newspaper Sunday.
Many brave members of the public noticed him enter and whispered his name and gestured to each other. He came in and left with another of the investigating officers. He probably bowed his head to the magistrate upon entrance and exit. However when this was raised by the lawyers and an officer went into the corridor to call his name - no response was forthcoming.
Masimba then decided to adjourn the hearing to Wednesday 2nd April at
8:30 am, punishing the Sibanda with a further night in custody. Worse still it is believed that Sibanda was removed to Khami Prison some 30 km outside Bulawayo. Remand cases are normally held in central or suburban stations. His wife has been denied access to him tonight.
The representation of women in national parliaments currently stands at 15 percent worldwide although it is shown that 76 countries have introduced some type of gender quota. Given the slow rate by which the number of women in politics is growing, quotas have come to be seen as an important mechanism to increase the political representation of women, with more and more countries legislating the introduction of quotas for women. A new website gives the first overview of the use of electoral quotas for women worldwide.
The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), in partnership with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and South Africa's National Research Foundation (NRF) is pleased to announce the 2003-4 program for research and training on Understanding Exclusion, Creating Value: African Youth in a Global Age. Funding for the program is provided by the Education for Democracy and Development Initiative of the U.S. Agency for International Development, CODESRIA, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), and the NRF.
HelpAge International Africa Regional Development Centre have produced five radio plays available on CD as parts of their Rights Programme highlighting rights issues as they affect older people. The titles are: The effects of HIV/AIDS on older people in Africa; Poverty and older people in Africa; Abandonment of Older people in Africa; Witchcraft accusations and violence against older people in Africa; Health care for older people. They also have a two-part documentary highlighting the abuse of older people's rights. The titles are: The rights of older people: the mark of a noble society; The rights of older people: possible solutions. Contact [email protected] for copies.
Does agriculture have a role to play in economic growth and poverty reduction? This paper considers the role of agriculture in Kenya. A brief discussion of the role of agriculture in economic growth and poverty reduction is provided and the performance of Kenya's agricultural sector is discussed, focusing on both the policy and structural constraints that have impacted on agricultural performance. The author concludes that the agricultural sector has not received the attention and recognition it deserves in relation to the importance of its role in economic growth and poverty reduction.
What is the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)? How does the PRSP relate to WB and IMF lending? Do PRSP countries still get structural adjustment loans? What is the connection with the HIPC debt relief initiative? Are PRSPs really nationally owned? What does ownership mean? Do PRSPs do away with conditionality? Do PRSPs depart from the Washington Consensus in the choice of policies? Find out more about PRSP's by delving into this rough guide.