72-year-old Ogiek community elder, Cosmas Chemwotei Murunga, inspects one of the trees felled by foreigners in 1976. Ogiek community protests put an end to government approved logging of the indigenous red cedar trees here. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
CHEPKITALE, Kenya , Jul 21 2020 (IPS)

The Ogiek community, indigenous peoples from Kenya’s Chepkitale National Reserve, are in the process of implementing a modern tool to inform and guide the conservation and management of the natural forest. The community has inhabited this area for many generations, long before Kenya was a republic. Through this process, they hope to get the government to formally recognise their customary tenure in line with the Community Land Act.

In collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), community elders, civil society members and representatives from the 32 clans that form the Chepkitale Ogiek community are mapping their ancestral territory using a methodology known as Participatory 3-Dimensional Modelling (P3DM).

Technically speaking, P3DM or 3D maps brings together three elements that were previously considered impossible to integrate – local spatial and natural resource knowledge, geographic information systems (GIS) and physical modelling.

“The mapping will support the spatial planning and management of the Chepkitale National Reserve by identifying actions required to address the various challenges affecting the management and conservation of the natural resources in the targeted area,” John Owino, Programme Officer for the Water and Wetlands Programme at IUCN, told IPS.

The process, which started in 2018, involves extensive dialogue with community members in order to document their history, indigenous knowledge of forest conservation and protection of natural resources using their traditional laws and geographical territories.

According to IUCN, which is providing both technical and financial support, the exercise was projected to be completed by the end of 2020. However, this target will be delayed as a result of the prevailing coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the Ogiek’s unique traditional community laws recorded in the participatory mapping exercise state that charcoal burning is totally prohibited, poaching is strictly forbidden and commercial farming is considered illicit.

“In this community, we relate with trees and nature the same way we relate with humans. Felling a mature tree in our culture is synonymous to killing a parental figure,” Cosmas Chemwotei Murunga, a 72-year-old community elder, told IPS. “Why should you cut down a tree when you can harvest its branches and use them for whatever purpose?” he posed.

Very famously, in 1976, the Ogiek community protests put an end to government-approved logging of the indigenous red cedar trees here.

The trees, felled some 44 years ago, still lie perfectly untouched on the ground in Loboot village.

The Ogiek indigenous community who live in Kenya’s Mount Elgon forest have conserved the forest’s natural ecosystem for centuries. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

While the Ogiek are an asset to the conservation of the forested area within the park, their dispute with the government over their rights to the forested land has been a long-running one.

• There have been several attempts by the government to evict the community from the forest, following the gazetting of the entire Ogiek community land as the ‘Chepkitale National Reserve in Mount Elgon,’ which made the land they live on a protected area from the year 2000.
• Since then, police officers invaded the Ogiek community land several times, torching their houses, destroying their property and forcefully driving them away from the forest.
• But in 2008, the community, through Chepkitale Indigenous People Development Project (CIPDP) — a community based organisation that brings together all Ogiek community members — went to court for arbitration. The court issued orders to immediately halt the forceful evictions. However, the case is yet to be determined.

“In many indigenous communities, governments have always used an excuse of environmental destruction to evict residents, and that was the same thing they said about our community,” Peter Kitelo, co-founder of the CIPDP, told IPS.

“However, we have proved them wrong, and when the case is finally determined, we are very hopeful that we will emerge victorious,” he said.

The 3D mapping, according to Owino, is in line with the Whakatane Mechanism, an IUCN initiative that supports the implementation of “the new paradigm” of conservation. It focuses on situations where indigenous peoples and/or local communities are directly associated with protected areas and are involved in its development and conservation as a result of their land and resource rights, including tenure, access and use.

• The mechanism promotes and supports the respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities and their free prior and informed consent in protected areas policy and practice, as required by IUCN resolutions, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

There are previous examples of P3DM mapping proving successful among another Ogiek communities — those in the Mau Forest.

• In 2006, a P3DM exercise involving 120 men and women from 21 Ogiek clans in the Mau Forest resulted in a 3D map of the Eastern Mau Forest Complex.
• According to the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), the 3D map was persuasive enough to convince the Kenyan Government of the Ogiek’s right to the land, and the need to protect the area from land grabbing and resource exploitation.

The CTA further reported that a rich P3DM portfolio of outputs, including reports, papers and maps, have been used at international forums to document the value of local/indigenous knowledge in sustainable natural resource management, conflict management and climate change adaptation, and in bridging the gap between scientific and traditional knowledge systems.

In addition to the 3D map, the Ogiek community is already working with the National Land Commission of Kenya, an independent body with several mandates. Among them is the mandate to initiate investigations, on its own initiative or based on a complaint, into present or historical land injustices and to recommend appropriate redress.

“Once completed, the 3D map will be a very important tool for this community because apart from effective management of the natural resources in Chepkitale, we will use it as an instrument to prove how we have sustainably coexisted with nature for generations,” said Kitelo.

The Ogiek community want their territory officially recognised as community land provided for by Kenya’s new constitution, particularly in relation to the Community Land Act, 2016, which provides for the “recognition, protection and registration of community land rights; management and administration of community land”.

According to elderly members of the Ogiek community, the forest is their main source of livelihood.

Inside the forest, the community keeps bees for honey production, which is a major part of their diet apart from milk, blood and meat. They also gather herbs from the indigenous trees, shrubs and forest vegetation, and feed on some species found in the forest. Their diet is not limited to bamboo shoots, wild mushrooms and wild vegetables such as stinging nettle.

“Since I was born 72 years ago, this forest has always been the main source of our livelihoods,” Chemwotei Muranga told IPS.

Now, armed with traditional knowledge of forest management and conservation of natural resources, community-based rules and regulations, and provisions within the country’s new constitution and the Community Land Act— they hope to be doing so for centuries to come.

“Living in such a place is the only lifestyle I understand,” Chemwotei Muranga said.

The inclusive approach of supporting indigenous peoples and local communities in conservation will be a major focus at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France, next January. The topic falls under one of the main themes of the Congress, “Upholding rights, ensuring effective and equitable governance” with sessions aiming to discuss and provide recommendations for how the conservation community can support the existing stewardship of indigenous peoples and local communities.

Emmanuel Nsabimana, a casual labourer at the National Tree Seed Centre, in Huye, in Rwanda’s Southern Province, has worked planting trees for over 40 years. He believes there has been considerable improvements in the seed quality from the centre since the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) became one of the contributors to its restoration. Credit: Emmanuel Hitimana/IPS

By Emmanuel Hitimana
HUYE, Rwanda, May 20 2020 (IPS)

In 2011, when Rwanda committed to restoring 2 million hectares of land in a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested areas by 2020 — it seemed like a big ask. 

The densely populated and geographically small African nation had many limitations which could stand in the way of this as well as a commitment to achieving forest cover increase of up to 30 percent of total land area by 2030 as part of the Bonn Challenge.

Aside from limited land availability — Rwanda’s land area only encompasses 2.4 million hectares or 24,000 square kilometres — the country’s terrain did little to support the efforts. The country’s topography includes steep slopes, and it is the country with the highest mean soil erosion rate, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

There were other factors too:

• A majority of the population — some 98 percent — were using trees as an energy source and the situation was not expected to change soon;
• 70 percent of the land was used by smallholder farmers, and the diversity of tree species was also low, with limited quality seed available. 

But by 2018, Rwanda, along with South Korea, Costa Rica, Pakistan and China, was considered one of the lead countries in the world with its successful restoration programme.

How did the country manage to restore more than 800,000 hectares — almost half of its original pledge — in less than a decade? 

Part of the answer lies in the restructuring and strengthening of the country’s National Tree Seed Centre, located in Huye, in Rwanda’s Southern Province, some 133 kilometres from the country’s capital.

The centre is tasked with centralising the supply of tree seeds across the country, including establishing new seed sources, improving trees with growth deficiencies, and collecting and certifying seed.

Until 2014, the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) managed the centre. But farmers complained that they were unable to grow plants from almost 90 percent of the seeds from the centre.

Emmanuel Nsabimana, a casual labourer at the National Tree Seed Centre, has worked planting trees around Huye for over 40 years.

He remembers the attitude of local farmers and communities.

“Farmers were always bitter towards the centre because they thought that it was incapable of providing them with adequate seeds,” he recalls.

“Many would return the seeds.”

But in 2014 the centre shifted from RAB to become a unit of the Rwanda Forestry Agency. In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — one of the founders and Secretariat of the Bonn Challenge, along with the German Government — stepped in to become one of the most significant contributors to the restoration of Rwanda’s National Tree Seed Centre.   

IUCN also partnered with the Rwandan Government, the Belgian Development Agency (ENABEL) and the University of Rwanda (UR) to strengthen the centre.

IUCN supported capacity building, including the training of staff, providing equipment to the centre, upgrading and developing infrastructure like greenhouses, maintenance of the seed stands where seeds are collected form, and rehabilitation of seed store where seeds are kept before they are distributed, Jean Pierre Maniriho, Forest Landscape Restoration Officer at IUCN, tells IPS.

“Before partners came in, many things were not going well. For example, we did not have a cold room, which was bad for seeds. We were only two staff, and the stock was also old. But we have steadily improved until now,” Floribert Manayabagabo, the production officer at the National Tree Seed Centre, says. His job is to make sure the seeds harvested at the centre are ready for market.

Manayabagabo thinks that the centre’s success story is thanks to a combination of great partnerships that ensured the centre now has good infrastructure that includes nurseries, a laboratory, a modern cold room and five full-time staff.

Maniriho says seed quality and quantity are essential to ensure sustainability and to meet demand.

Currently, 30 percent of the seeds come from the nearby 90-year-old, 200-hectare Arboretum of Ruhande, which surrounds the University of Rwanda.

The seeds from the arboretum include 207 exotic and indigenous species, explains Emmanuel Niyigena, a field officer at the centre. 

The remaining 70 percent come from the outside of the centre, with a significant amount of seeds sourced from nine agro forestry-related cooperatives within Rwanda, and the remaining seed being imported from Kenya.

One of many nurseries at Rwanda’s National Tree Seed Centre. The centre is tasked with centralising the supply of tree seeds across the country, including establishing new seed sources, improving trees with growth deficiencies, and collecting and certifying seed. Credit: Emmanuel Hitimana/IPS

It’s Eric Kazubwenge’s job to make sure that the seeds from the centre never disappoint. He is in charge of seed inspection and regulation at the centre.

“We normally do a physical inspection to make sure that they are not damaged. Then we proceed with laboratory testing before we conduct other testing in the nursery where seeds are conserved to make sure they will not resist soil plantation.”

He adds that multiple tests are continually carried out to ascertain how long a seed can grow in a nursery or how much moisture they need to survive.

Kazubwenge learnt many of these skills in Kenya, where he was trained through an IUCN partnership.

While Kazubwenge’s training was highly technical, members of cooperatives involved in seed supply chain also received training.

Kazubwenge tells IPS that previously it was very difficult for the cooperatives to supply to the centre the good seeds as they couldn’t distinguish good from bad quality seeds. The Tree Seed Centre was also unable to test and prove the quality of seeds due to lack of equipment (seed laboratory was not well equipped). This combination of limitations meant only a handful of seeds provided to the forest growers before 2014 had been fruitful.

“Our stock is (now) full of good seeds in terms of quality and quantity, thanks to cooperatives that were trained in seed collection and selection through IUCN partnership,” Janviere Muhayimana, who is in charge of the seed stock, tells IPS.

The centre also ensures farmers and the community are given the necessary information about the planting of the improved seeds.

Nsabimana concurs: “There are no more complaints (from farmers) as the seeds respond well to the soil.”

The researchers are optimistic about the future.

Kazubwenge’s vision for the centre’s future involves advanced technologies that will allow him to “carry out genetic assessment and analysis because it gives us deep knowledge about the compatibility of seeds according to their origins”.

Maniriho sees Rwanda on a good path to become a regional seed hub.

“Deforestation is a global challenge. What we have in Rwanda is what exactly is happening in Burundi or Malawi. We are importing seeds from Kenya today, but tomorrow others may be importing from us. We can make those connections that can encourage and strengthen the reciprocal partnership in seed supply and keep us from sending money overseas to only import seeds that we are sometimes capable of producing.”

Rwanda’s successful steps towards meeting its reforestation pledge proves a powerful example of how nature conservation can support livelihoods ahead of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, which will be held in France in January 2021. Held every four years, the Congress is a meeting of conservation experts and custodians, government and business representatives, indigenous peoples, scientists, as well as other professional stakeholders, who have an interest in nature and the sustainable and just use of natural resources. One of the major issues addressed will be the managing of landscapes for nature and people.

** Writing with Nalisha Adams in Bonn.

Excerpt:

Pedro cooks at a deli in Upper Manhattan. He is one of the 775,000 undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the state of New York in 2018.

By Carmen Arroyo
NEW YORK, Feb 12 2019 (IPS)

One chilly afternoon in November 2005, Hilarino came by Pedro’s house in Oaxaca, Mexico, driving a shiny red car.

“Pedro!” he shouted, “We are leaving in March. There is a route North to the U.S. that passes along the sea.”

Pedro was thrilled. “I saw him with that car and I thought ‘there’s money up there. At least a lot of jobs.’” Pedro shook Hilarino’s hand, went back inside and told his wife Camila he was leaving the country. He was headed to the United States of America.

Twelve years after he initially crossed the border as a mojado, a wetback, Pedro cooks at a deli in Upper Manhattan. He is one of the 775,000 undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the state of New York in 2018. Like most migrants, he left his family behind and came to the U.S. dreaming of success. But mostly, he dreamt of happiness. And like many of them, he is still looking for it.

Today, Pedro throws food on the grill like a pitcher in the final round of a baseball game—same speed, same accuracy. He also prepares sandwiches, spreads cream cheese on bagels, and sometimes cooks burgers and steaks. He always adds some spices to his cooking: chili powder, cumin, and garlic.

From Monday to Saturday, he stands behind the stove for 8 hours, and talks to his colleagues about their families and their weekends. They’re almost all Mexican and crossed the border by foot.

Samuel, Pedro’s closest friend at the deli, crossed in 1999, when he was 15 years old. Now he is married and has three kids. His other friends at the deli, Jose, Lupe and Juana, had a similar fate. They live with their families in the U.S.

During his shift, Pedro’s dark, straight hair is covered under a white cloth that resembles a chef’s hat. When you ask for a turkey sandwich after 10:00 PM, Pedro peers over the counter, overcoming his 5’2” height, curious to see who’s buying.

I met them—Samuel, Juana, Jose, Lupe and Pedro—when I moved to New York in 2017. They love Spanish-speakers that go to the deli. Being from Spain, I fit right in.

“How’s school?” asks Lupe when I tell her I attend Columbia University. “What do you study? Be careful!”

Pedro fears Donald Trump, “he’s not good for immigrants, he’s just rich.” He loves Mexico’s president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), “he has great ideas, he’s really going to make a difference.”  Pedro supported Hillary in 2016. “She said she would help us out.”

“Are you a Democrat?” I ask him.

He looks at Samuel, they laugh, and reply simultaneously: “You could say so.”

Up until the time Pedro was 23 years old, he had lived in Oaxaca all of his life. He worked for four years as a police officer in his hometown. His job paid enough to provide for Camila and their three-year old daughter, but not enough to own land, launch a business, or do anything aside from surviving.

Pedro was tired. His job was dangerous and boring. “If I’d stayed, I doubt I’d be alive.” He never knew when the narcos [drug dealer] would bribe the officers or would kill them out of spite. “I was going crazy,” he explains over coffee.

Until the age of 23, Pedro lived in Mexico his entire life.

In September 2005, his childhood friend who lived in California, Hilarino, phoned him. “I’m coming back for you, Pedro.”

“I was so excited, híjole. You can’t imagine,” sighs Pedro.

That same night, he told his pregnant wife he was leaving. Camila shook her head. “You are lying.” Pedro remained silent, finished his frijoles, kissed his wife good night, and went to sleep.

Hilarino returned to Mexico in November 2005 when Pedro’s wife had just given birth to a second girl. Hilarino showed up at Pedro’s house in a new car and agreed to take a safe passage through the Gulf of California into Arizona.

Pedro told Camila he was definitely leaving. She stared at him in silence, blaming him for the lonely years to come. But she didn’t quite believe him. “You have a job here,” barked Camila.“If you want to go, go. But you have a job here. Your family is here.” Pedro couldn’t hear her. At that time, happiness lay on the other side of the border.

On the Feb. 28, 2006, Hilarino called Pedro. There was a way into the U.S. on  March 3rd. Pedro hung up, quit his job, and filled a small bag with dried tortillas and canned kidney beans. On the morning of the third, he woke up and left.

Camila begged him to stay. She cried, pointed at their daughters, and let her tears wet the tablecloth. But nothing could move Pedro. He was not going to let his feelings dictate his actions. “I hardened my heart. I already knew what I wanted,” he tells me in a confident voice, while he stirs his coffee. To this day, Camila mentions every time they fight, “you never cried for me when you left.” Pedro shrugs, and the abundance of his wrinkles becomes more apparent.

Hilarino left his car with his parents in Oaxaca, and he joined Pedro and another 12 hopeful Mexicans—10 men, 2 women—on a bus ride from Oaxaca to the Arizona border. Leading them was a “coyote,” a smuggler who helps Mexicans get into the U.S.

Hilarino, Pedro and another 12 hopeful Mexicans—10 men, 2 women—took a bus from Oaxaca to the Arizona border.

Since President Trump took office, coyotes have increased their rates. They now charge eye-popping fees—ranging from 8,000 to 12,000 dollars—to those looking to cross the border. Twelve years ago, Pedro paid only 1, 300 dollars.

After two days on the bus, they arrived at the frontier—1,800 miles away from home. They bought 4 gallons of water, Coke and Red Bulls in preparation for the driest journey of their lives. In a matter of hours, they became mojados—undocumented and unwanted. They had been loved, but now they felt tossed aside. They left their families behind and looked toward the future, towards happiness.

The journey lasted four days. They walked at night and slept in the mornings to avoid the heat. “The first night I was so scared…Wow. Una caminada recia [A tough walk],” says Pedro, to attest to the length of the journey. “We hiked from 6:00PM to 5:00AM. I didn’t even know where I was. Once you are inside the desert, you can deal with anything.”

That first day was a nightmare. Pedro napped next to Hilarino. You don’t hear much in the desert, so his snores filled their moments of rest. Suddenly, one of the 14 migrants came running toward them carrying his shoes in his right hand. “La Migra, la Migra!” he shouted warning his colleagues of the Border Patrol Agents. “Oh my God, I was so scared,” Pedro recalls. They all started running, but the coyote called them back and calmed them down.

“They won’t come here. Let’s just walk fast.”

Pedro bursts into laughter, covering his mouth with his hands. “They didn’t get me. They didn’t get me! Thank God!!”

Pedro mentions God once every five sentences. After a few seconds of doubt, he admits he is  Catholic, but that he doesn’t go to Mass very often, nor do his friends Samuel or Jose. All of a sudden, he realises something: “She’s from Spain, don’t you see? Where do you think religion came from? From Spain!” Samuel nods convinced, and Pedro looks back at me with a satisfied smile. “The Argentinian Pope is a good person,” he adds.

On the third day in the desert, they had run out of water. Pedro and Hilarino licked the remains of their empty water bottles, hoping for one more drop. One of the 14 fainted, so they carried him until they arrived in Phoenix, Arizona. They had walked 380 kilometres, more than 80 hours, eating only corn tortillas and kidney beans from a can.

On the third day in the desert, Pedro and Hilarino had run out of water.

The coyote had arranged for a van to drive them out of Phoenix to Los Angeles, California. “He was a very good man. I’ve heard other stories. Kidnappings, killings. But this coyote did everything he promised he would do. He got the 14 of us to Los Angeles.” Nevertheless, insists Pedro, that was 2006. Now the story has changed. “The border is too dangerous. The narcos are everywhere. If you cross their territory, you become theirs.”

The narcos are not the only problem for Hispanic immigrants in 2018. After President George Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in October 2006, the government built 1,120 km of fencing from San Diego to New Mexico, making it harder for immigrants to cross by foot. Now, with President Trump, the number of arrests by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has surged. Immigrants detained at the border are criminally prosecuted, and funding for Border Patrol Agents has increased. Pedro considers himself lucky to have come to the U.S. in early 2006, instead of today, with these increased challenges.

Once in California, Hilarino and Pedro obtained fake IDs and looked for jobs. For the next six months, Pedro harvested pears, peaches, and kiwis alongside other Hispanics. Their salaries were 420 dollars per week. Pedro sent part of his earnings to Camila. But he hated the job. “It was too hard,” he remembers, rubbing his dry hands against each other.

He also missed his family. “For the first three years, I could barely speak with them over the phone. I couldn’t see them.” Now, with Facebook, Facetime, and WhatsApp, they talk frequently. “The first time I saw them I cried so much. It was incredible,” he smiles again. But then he mumbles, “It’s still so hard. So hard, so hard.”

Silvino, one of his colleagues at the plantation, suggested they go to Montgomery, Alabama, where he had been working earlier in the year. The job was in construction and the pay was higher, 600 dollars per week. Pedro quickly agreed and bid Hilarino farewell.

Pedro paid 200 dollars to get to Montgomery, moved in with Silvino, and phoned Camila, as he did every time he traveled. The following day Pedro was working in construction, where he stayed for the next three months.

By the end of November, winter took over Alabama and construction work stopped. “There were no jobs, nothing I could do.” Pedro wanted to move again, when his wife called him. “My kids… They were sick. They had pneumonia.” He told Camila to use the savings he had left in Mexico for the doctor. Then he looked for someone to take him to New York, where he had a friend living on 125th Street. Silvino, as Camila and Hilarino before him, didn’t want Pedro to leave. But his pleas and promises of employment didn’t make a dent in Pedro’s resolution. He chased his future to New York.

In New York, with its millions of inhabitants rushing to a job, a date, or a doctor’s appointment, Pedro felt more at home than he had for the last nine months.

This time, he paid 400 dollars for a 17-hour ride. When he arrived to the city, it was snowing. “‘What is this?’ I asked. I had never seen snow before. I didn’t know what to do!” He laughs, making his almond-shaped eyes disappear. “I was in the Big Apple.” In New York, with its millions  of inhabitants rushing to a job, a date, or a doctor’s appointment, he felt more at home than he had for the last nine months.

The couple he knew at 125th Street fostered him in their home while he roamed the streets looking for a job. It was so cold that he didn’t look up to the skyscrapers, he just looked down as he trudged through the ice and snow. The next day, Jose, a Mexican friend of the couple, came over. “You don’t have a job, compadre? Let me talk to el patrón, he’ll have a job for you.”

Pedro hadn’t picked up much English on his two previous jobs—everyone was Hispanic in the farming and construction industries.

“What can you do?” asked Jose.

“Anything,” replied Pedro.

Jose called his boss, and Pedro started working at the deli that very night. After his three previous months in Alabama construction, he actually was ready for anything.

For a month and a half, he worked as the handyman and delivery boy of the deli. For once, he finally felt happy: he enjoyed his friends, his children were healthy, and he liked New York. But the rhythm was too fast. “Here, everyone rushes. They work, work, work, every single day of the year. They are busy all the time. Over there, you have more time for family, for tradition.”

He stops for a moment and adds: “Although I love turkey day.”

“Thanksgiving?” I ask.

“Yes, turkey day!!” he laughs.

The deli’s kitchen needed a cook, so one of the Mexicans who worked behind the stove taught Pedro how to grill.

After a couple of months, he started looking for a new job. “It didn’t pay enough.” The deli’s kitchen needed a cook, so one of the Mexicans who worked behind the stove taught Pedro how to grill. “This is easy, Pedro. Try one hour per day, before your shift, you’ll become a cook.”

Working at the kitchen was much better: He could learn English, and the salary was higher.

Samuel, who works at the counter, advocated for Pedro in front of his boss.

“I had never cooked before. In Mexico, my wife cooked, and I worked. I came home to a warm meal every day, as is tradition.” So when he got the job, he phoned Camila.

“Don’t be sad,” she said. “We are doing well. Échale ganas.” Pedro did as she said and worked hard every day, and kept sending money back to his family. Two years in, Samuel ran to the deli: “Good news for you, Pedro. El patrón will pay you more starting next week.”

That week Samuel counted Pedro’s cash with him. “He is such a noble man,” smiles Pedro. “He was so happy for me.”

Samuel also speaks highly of Pedro. “He is always laughing, and he talks so much,” Samuel points at him, while Pedro chats with Jose.

Now, Pedro shares a room in Upper Manhattan with an Ecuadorian immigrant. He pays 300 dollars in rent, and sends almost 2,000 dollars to his family every month through Western Union. Most of it goes to Camila and his two daughters. “A couple of years ago, Camila phoned me and said, ‘We are going to buy some land.’”

Pedro leans over and assures me, “That wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t come here. They have everything now.”

Still Camila wants him back home, and Pedro has the same desire. He misses his family. When he wakes up at 12:00PM, he calls his daughters, who are now 13 and 15 years old. The smallest one used to sing songs to him on the phone as a child. “I talked to her and she sang back. She only sang,” he tells me cheerfully. After a 30-minute chat with them, he gets changed for his 4:00PM shift at the deli. He also sends them presents from time to time: socks, shoes, and clothes. 

On Sundays, he listens to rancheras (he hates reggaeton), goes for strolls downtown, and has beers with his Mexican friends. Sometimes he joins Samuel’s family when they go for a picnic on Governor’s Island. Every couple of days he reads El Diario de Nueva York, for immigration news. He also glances over El Diario de Mexico, to feel assured that the demise of Mexico’s largest political party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), has actually happened, and AMLO is in control. Samuel, Jose, Lupe, Juana and the other Mexicans who work at the deli feel the same way.

“Most of my friends want to go back home too. One just left. He had a girlfriend there,” laughs Pedro. When he returns to Mexico, he will start his own business, maybe a restaurant. But he knows that the moment he sets foot on that plane back to his homeland, he will never return.

“I’ve been saying this for three years. Someday I will go. But not now.” Pedro smiles again, and he realigns his chef’s hat, while he throws strips of beef onto the grill.

He looks back at Samuel and repeats: “Someday.”

• All names have been changed to preserve the identity of those featured.

Children stampede for reading material at the Chingwizi transit camp. Most of the kids had their schooling disrupted due to the displacement. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

By Davison Mudzingwa
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe, Jun 26 2014 (IPS)

When the Tokwe-Mukosi dam’s wall breached, so started the long, painful and disorienting journey for almost 18,000 people who had lived in the 50-kilometre radius of Chivi basin in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo province as even those not affected by the flood were removed from their homes.

The community was relocated to Chingwizi, an arid terrain near Triangle Estates, a sugar cane farm and ethanol project jointly owned by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

IPS was one of the few agencies able to visit the site and speak to the displaced.

More than 18,000 people live in the Chingwizi transit camp in Mwenezi district, about 150 kms from their former homes in Chivi basin as they wait to be allocated one-hectare plots of land by the government. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

By Davison Mudzingwa and Francis Hweshe
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe, Jun 25 2014 (IPS)

As the villagers sit around the flickering fire on a pitch-black night lit only by the blurry moon, they speak, recounting how it all began.

They take turns, sometimes talking over each other to have their own experiences heard. When the old man speaks, everyone listens. “It was my first time riding a helicopter,” John Moyo* remembers.

“The soldiers came, clutching guns, forcing everyone to move. I tried to resist, for my home was not affected but they wouldn’t hear any of it.”

So started the long, painful and disorienting journey for the 70-year-old Moyo and almost 18,000 other people who had lived in the 50-kilometre radius of Chivi basin in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo province.“We don’t want this life of getting fed like birds.” -- John Moyo, displaced villager from Chivi basin

When heavy rains pounded the area in early January, the 1.8 billion cubic metre Tokwe-Mukosi dam’s wall breached.

Flooding followed, destroying homes and livestock. The government, with the help of non-governmental organisations, embarked on a rescue mission. And even unaffected homes in high-lying areas were evacuated by soldiers.

According to Moyo, whose home was not affected, this was an opportunity for the government, which had been trying to relocate those living near Chivi basin for sometime.

“They always said they wanted to establish an irrigation system and a game park in the area that covered our ancestral homes,” he tells IPS.

For Itai Mazanhi*, a 33-year-old father of three, the government had the best excuse to remove them from the land that he had known since birth.

“The graves of my forefathers are in that place,” he tells IPS. Mazanhi is from Gororo village.

After being temporarily housed in the nearby safe areas of Gunikuni and Ngundu in Masvingo province, the over 18,000 people or 3,000 families were transferred to Nuanetsi Ranch in the Chingwizi area of Mwenezi district, about 150 kms from their former homes.

The crop and livestock farmers from Chivi basin have been forced to adjust in a land that lacks the natural fertility of their former land, water and adequate pastures for their livestock.

The dust road to the Chingwizi camp is a laborious 40-minute drive littered with sharp bumps and lurking roadside trenches.

From the top of an anthill, a vantage point at the entrance of this settlement reveals a rolling pattern of tents and zinc makeshift structures that stretch beyond the sight of the naked eye. At night, fires flicker faintly in the distance, and a cacophony of voices mix with the music from solar- and battery-powered radio sets. It’s the image of a war refugee relief camp.

A concern for the displaced families is the fact that they were settled in an area earmarked for a proposed biofuel project. The project is set to be driven by the Zimbabwe Bio-Energy company, a partnership between the Zimbabwe Development Trust and private investors. The state-owned Herald newspaper quoted the project director Charles Madonko saying resettled families could become sugarcane out-growers for the ethanol project.

This plan was subject to scathing attack from rights watchdog Human Rights Watch. In a report released last month, the organisation viewed this as a cheap labour ploy.

“The Zimbabwean army relocated 3,000 families from the flooded Tokwe-Mukorsi dam basin to a camp on a sugar cane farm and ethanol project jointly owned by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front [ZANU-PF] and Billy Rautenbach, a businessman and party supporter,” read part of the report.

Sugar cane fields like this one in Chisumbanje are planned to feed the ethanol project in Mwenezi district. The displaced villagers from Chivi basin fear they will be used as cheap labourers. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

The sugarcane plantations will be irrigated by the water from the Tokwe-Mukosi dam. Upon completion, the dam is set to become Zimbabwe’s largest inland dam, with a capacity to irrigate over 25,000 hectares.

Community Tolerance Reconciliation and Development, COTRAD, a non-governmental organisation that operates in the Masvingo province sees the displacement of the 3,000 families as a brutal retrogression. The organisation says ordinary people are at the mercy of private companies and the government.

“The people feel like outcasts, they no longer feel like Zimbabweans,” Zivanai Muzorodzi, COTRAD programme manager, tells IPS.

Muzorodzi, whose organisation has been monitoring the land tussle before the floods, says the land surrounding the Tokwe-Mukosi dam basin was bought by individuals, mostly from the ruling ZANU-PF party.

“Villagers won’t own the land or the means of production. Only ZANU-PF bigwigs will benefit,” Muzorodzi says.

The scale of the habitats has posed serious challenges for the cash-strapped government of Zimbabwe. Humanitarian organisations such as Oxfam International and Care International have injected basic services such clean water through water bowsers and makeshift toilets.

“It’s not safe at all, it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” a Zimbabwe Ministry of Local Government official stationed at the camp and who preferred anonymity tells IPS. “The latrines you see here are only one metre deep. An outbreak of a contagious disease would spread fast.”

Tendai Zingwe fears her child might contract diarrhoea due to poor sanitation conditions in Chingwizi camp. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

Similar fears stalk Spiwe Chando*, a mother of four. The 23-year-old speaks as she sorts her belongings scattered in small blue tent in which an adult cannot sleep fully stretched out. “I fear for my child because another family lost a child due to diarrhoea last week. This can happen to anyone,” she tells IPS, sweating from the heat inside the tent. “I hope we will move from this place soon and get proper land to restart our lives.”

This issue has posed tensions at this over-populated camp. Meetings, rumour and conjecture circulate each day. Across the camp, frustrations are progressively building up. As a result, a ministerial delegation got a hostile reception during a visit last month. The displaced farmers accuse the government of deception and reneging on its promises of land allocation and compensation.

Children stampede for reading material at the Chingwizi transit camp. Most of the kids had their schooling disrupted due to the displacement. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

The government has promised to allocate one hectare of land per family, at a location about 17 kms from this transit camp. This falls far short of what these families own in Chivi basin. Some of them, like Mazanhi, owned about 10 hectares. The land was able to produce enough food for their sustenance and a surplus, which was sold to finance their children’s education and healthcare.

Mazanhi is one of the few people who has already received compensation from the government. Of the agreed compensation of 3,000 dollars, he has only received 900 dollars and is not certain if he will ever be paid the remainder of what he was promised. “There is a lot of corruption going on in that office,” he tells IPS.

COTRAD says the fact that ordinary villagers are secondary beneficiaries of the land and water that once belonged to them communally is an indication of a resource grabbing trend that further widens the gap of inequality.

“People no longer have land, access to water, healthcare and children are learning under trees.”

For Moyo, daily realities at the transit camp and a hazy future is both a painful reminder of a life gone by and a sign of “the next generation of dispossession.” However, he hopes for a better future.

“We don’t want this life of getting fed like birds,” says Moyo.

*Names altered for security reasons.

The ika bet (treasury), in which manuscripts are stored, of Debre Damo monastery, located far to the north of Ethiopia. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
DEBRE LIBANOS, Ethiopia, May 8 2014 (IPS)

Misganew Andeurgay changes his bamboo-made pen for another, dips it in a tiny pot of viscous liquid and, on a parchment page filled with black script, begins to trace in scarlet-red ink the Amharic word for god. 

For centuries Ethiopian scribes like Misganew have written holy texts in manuscripts made out of leather and with worshipful respect, inscribing on them holy names in red ink.

“It is a difficult job but I like it,” 50-year-old Misganew, who has taught and practised the craft of writing Amharic calligraphy for 21 years, tells IPS. He adds that sitting on the floor for hours on end as he writes is hard on his knees and legs.

He travelled 700km from Gondar in northern Ethiopia to work at Debre Libanos, 100km north of Addis Ababa, because here leather is more accessible and he can make more money. His family, including his five children, wait for him in Gondar.

Misganew Andeurgay, 50, copying a religious text onto parchment at Debre Libanos, 100km north of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

But concerns are mounting that Ethiopia’s manuscript tradition and the many livelihoods and skills associated with it — such as calligraphy, parchment production, book binding, and illustration arts — are under threat.

Ethiopia’s growing economy has achieved an average 10 percent growth since 2004. This is set to continue in the coming years with a somewhat reduced but still high eight percent growth rate. Although the story of this Horn of Africa nation’s economy is heartening in appearance, it is hardly a story of a rising tide of prosperity that has lifted all people along with it.“We need to promote the skills in a modern way and make them useful for contemporary life.” -- Hasen Said, chief curator of the Ethnological Museum in Addis Ababa.

Scribes, for example, have been adversely affected by the country’s burgeoning leather industry. In 2011, total shipments of leather and leather products generated 2.8 billion dollars and by 2020 that figure could increase by another four billion dollars, according to the Ethiopian Ministry of Industry. But this seemingly positive trend has driven up the price of leather, the raw material on which scribes depend.

Manuscript making is becoming increasingly expensive while already being immensely time consuming compared to the printed press. Because of this, parchment manuscript production in Ethiopia is declining, says John Mellors, an Ethiophile and independent researcher who has visited Ethiopia regularly since 1995.

“Another problem is that scribes are increasingly struggling to find patrons who traditionally have bought books for churches or themselves,” Mellors tells IPS.

Many people in larger towns assume parchment books stopped being made many years ago and so wouldn’t even consider commissioning a book to be made, he explains.

Misganew works for about 12 hours a day as he slowly and steadily traces graceful Amharic characters along faint grooves etched into the parchment.

By the end of the month he can usually produce a book of at least 32 pages, which could sell for about 3,000 birr (157 dollars) — if he can secure a customer.

A young novice monk at Debre Damo monastery in the Tigrai region far to the north of Ethiopia, close to Eritrea. For hundreds of years monks preserved Christianity and its influence on Ethiopia’s parchment manuscript tradition. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

But in general, scribes’ average earnings are now so low that it is putting off a new generation from taking up the craft, further endangering the manuscript tradition, Mellors says.

It is generally agreed that the origin of parchment making found in Ethiopia today likely lies with Christian monks who braved crossing the Red Sea around the 4th century and brought the bible with them.

“These texts were subsequently copied by scribes onto parchment using techniques that appear to have changed very little up until the present day,” Mellors says.

Methods exist in Ethiopia that have not been used in European parchment production for over a thousand years, Richard Pankhurst, a renowned authority on Ethiopian manuscript illustration, tells IPS.

“This makes Ethiopia unique in keeping the tradition so far into the modern age,” Pankhurst adds.

Although how much longer it can survive in these modern times is the question at stake.

“The basic method for making parchment manuscripts in Ethiopia should survive as it’s reasonably well documented already,” Mellors says.

While British leather manufacturer Pittards, which has sourced leather from Ethiopia for nearly 100 years, announced that it wants to give something back by helping protect the country’s ancient parchment manuscript-making tradition and the skills associated with it, concerns remain.

“We don’t want to end up with just iPads,” Hasen Said, chief curator of the Ethnological Museum in Addis Ababa, tells IPS. “We need to promote [manuscript] skills in a modern way and make them useful for contemporary life.”

New technologies as well as older forms can coexist in a country like Ethiopia that has a rich history while becoming more of a global nation, Hasen argues.

Medhane Alem Adi Kasho, a rock-hewn church found in the Tigrai region of northern Ethiopia and in which some of Ethiopia’s precious ancient artefacts such as parchment manuscripts are stored. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

The medieval monastery at Debre Libanos, which houses the last school for apprentice scribes, is a source of some hope that the tradition of parchment manuscript production will survive, Hasen says.

When IPS visited the monastery all the students were yet to return from their Easter break. The monk IPS talked to was reluctant to be drawn into a conversation about how student numbers were faring, and suggested that such matters were best left in god’s care.

But many national treasures are poorly looked after due to the lack of adequate space and resources available for storage and restoration, according to the Society of Friends of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies.

Throughout Ethiopia’s long history, Ethiopia has had to contend with silver crosses made from Maria Theresa dollars, crowns, ornate incense burners, precious religious icons and the like being taken out of the country illegally.

The monk IPS spoke with was quick to point out that the hundreds of manuscripts looted by the British Army after the Makdela Expedition in 1868 still reside in the United Kingdom.

Judging by the evidence, it will likely take more than strong faith if Ethiopia’s manuscripts, associated traditions and other artefacts are to survive.

An Afghan soldier protects the palace of King Amanullah (1919-1929) that was partly destroyed in the 1992-1996 civil war. Credit: Giuliana Sgrena/IPS

By Lal Aqa Sherin
KABUL, May 16 2013 (IPS)

Western fears of a civil war in Afghanistan are growing ahead of the scheduled pullout of international troops in 2014. However, experts here say the situation on the ground is not comparable to either 1988, when the Soviets withdrew from the country, or the mujahideen’s rise to power in 1992, which plunged the country into civil war.

Speaking to BBC’s Radio 4 last month, British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond described the future of Afghanistan as uncertain, echoing a British Parliamentary Defence Committee warning that the country could descend into civil war within a few years.

But locals who have been watching the situation closely do not share this bleak prognosis of the country’s future.

Retired Colonel Mohammad Sarwar Niazai, a military observer, says the situation is different to what it was in the early 1990s when the Soviets pulled out, leaving the communist government of Mohammed Najibullah without support and presenting seven jihadi parties, armed and aided by the United States, with the perfect opportunity to seize power.

This time around, “no one can get the government out forcibly,” Niazai told IPS, referring to the fact that the U.S. and its coalition partners in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have promised to stand by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government for the foreseeable future.

Recently retired ISAF Commander General John Allen, speaking in Washington on Mar. 25, said the U.S. and its allies would retain a presence in Afghanistan big enough to bolster Afghan forces after the withdrawal of international combat troops at the end of 2014.

Still, Kabul Regional Chief of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) Shamasullah Ahmadzai warned that the roughly 336,000-strong Afghan National Army, though highly motivated, is in serious need of the weapons and arms promised by western allies during talks about the pullout.

Strategic interests

As international media reports of “impending” or “inevitable” conflict continue to proliferate, experts here contend that Western countries with a vested interest in maintaining their military presence have conjured the bogey of civil war to justify continued engagement.

“Their…goal is to create fear in Afghanistan,” Ghulam Jailani Zwak, head of the Afghan Analytical and Advisory Centre, told IPS, adding that he sees “no substance” in the predictions of chaos after 2014.

“Over the last 11 years, Afghanistan has built up a functioning civil society and a strong parliament that has shown it can stand up to the executive,” he said referring to the fact that at the end of 2012, 11 ministers were issued summons to appear in parliament or face impeachment for failing to spend 50 percent of their annual budgets in the last financial year.

Abdul Ghafoor Lewal, head of the Regional Studies Centre, believes threats of civil war are a deliberate Western ploy to maintain a military presence here, particularly in the Bagram airfield, one of the largest U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, located in the Parwan province.

Western powers would like Afghans to believe that foreign troops are their “best bet for security,” Lewal told IPS. The government must be “wise, prudent and…protect itself from the machinations of the West,” he added.

Meanwhile, Major General Rahmatullah Raufi, former commander of Paktia Army Corps and erstwhile governor of the southern province of Kandahar, dismisses the fears of war, claiming Afghans are more united now than they were 11 years ago.

A clear example of this was seen at the third ministerial conference of the Istanbul Process, held in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, on Apr. 26.

Originally intended to foster regional cooperation in the so-called ‘heart of Asia’ – primarily between Afghanistan and its neighbours – this year’s high-level gathering delved into a host of social issues, from education to disaster management, to help strengthen the war-torn country’s economic stability.

The independent Afghanistan Analysts Network said the Afghan government’s participation made clear that it saw the regional initiative as crucial to securing its future after 2014.

Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul, who led the delegation, said Afghanistan was “determined to reclaim (its) rightful place” as an economic centre connecting South Asia, Central Asia, Euroasia and the Middle East.

Moreover, according to experts like Member of Parliament (MP) Habibullah Kalakani – a former jihadi commander who fought against the Soviets – Afghan civil society is no longer “pliant” to foreign interests.

Independent media and human rights organisations including the AIHRC, whose president Sima Samar won the Alternative Nobel Prize last year, are widely respected and have earned international recognition for their efforts to build a culture of peace here.

Kalakani also pointed to the increasing number of educated young Afghans who are perfectly positioned to help their country make a democratic transition.

According to the Institute of International Education (IIE), only 4,000 students submitted applications for university admission in 2004. In 2005 this number increased tenfold to 40,000, reached 52,000 in 2006 and finally passed the 120,000-mark in 2012.

Girls now occupy 25 percent of the seats in public universities, a numbers that is increasing annually, while 52 new private universities have popped up around the country.

Defence Ministry Deputy Spokesperson Siamak Herawi agreed that 2014 will be a “year of change” but insisted there was good reason to believe “the change will be positive not negative,” he told Killid, adding that, this time around, “Afghan hands” will help to build the country.

* Lal Aqa Shirin writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS.

In the forest in Gbarpolu County, northwest Liberia, a group of men work on a surface gold mine. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Ed McKenna
ADDIS ABABA , Dec 24 2012 (IPS)

Many of the fastest-growing countries in the world are in Africa, the poorest continent on the planet, but the potential for recently-discovered resources to generate broad-based inclusive development opportunities is massive and remains under-exploited.

“I don’t believe that African nations are even close to understanding the enormous wealth that is their natural resource endowment,” David Doepel, chair of the Africa Research Group at Australia’s Murdoch University, told IPS.

African countries preparing to cash in on mineral wealth in East Africa include Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Ethiopia, based on recent discoveries of oil and gas.

In 2010, Guinea alone represented over eight percent of total world bauxite production, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have a combined share of 6.7 percent of the total world copper production, and Ghana and Mali together account for 5.8 percent of the total world gold production, while Ethiopia also accounts for one-sixth of the world’s tantalum production.

A World Bank report issued in October claimed consistent high commodity prices and strong export growth show that African countries need to value the economic importance of their unexploited natural resources.

Well-managed revenue from Africa’s resources could increase economic activity in the long term, create jobs, reduce poverty and improve access to health and education,said Doepel.

“It is vitally important for any resource-rich country to have a focus of maximising the total value of any of its natural resources over the lifetime of that resource – that is a combination of maximising returns and minimising negative consequences (both environmental and social). Opportunism and urgency to extract are not necessarily ingredients for maximising value,” warned Doepel.

African countries like Nigeria have been losing out to corruption and short-sightedness in pursuit of quick profits in the oil sector. Nigeria is Africa’s largest crude oil exporter, shipping more than two million barrels per day, and is also home to the world’s ninth-biggest gas reserves. An investigative report requested by Nigeria’s oil ministry released in October revealed that a lack of transparency in the West African nation’s oil sector led to a loss of revenue of 29 billion dollars between 2002 and 2012.

The Revenue Watch Institute is a non-profit policy institute that promotes the effective, transparent and accountable management of oil, gas and mineral resources for the public good. Alexandra Gillies, head of governance at the institute, told IPS that African countries need to be circumspect at every stage of exploiting their recently-discovered oil reserves.

“For new African producers, striking a good deal can be a real challenge. They often lack capacity and familiarity with the oil sector as compared with the oil companies, and political agendas can make leaders overly anxious to begin production quickly, sometimes at the expense of better, long-term deals.”

Current working models that ensure the private sector and the government are held to account are starting to succeed in countries like Ghana.

“Ghana has taken some promising steps with its young oil sector. They have created a citizen-led Public Interest and Accountability Commission to oversee the collection and allocation of oil revenues,” said Gillies.

Countries endowed with natural resources have a tendency to heavily depend on economic activity solely based around extracting and exporting the resource as a primary product. This approach limits economic opportunities for development and makes a country vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices and levels of demand, according to Doepel. For example, Nigeria possesses 2.9 percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves and hazardously depends on oil and gas for 90 percent of its export revenue.

Focusing on maximising revenue by taking oil out of the ground and exporting it without any value addition could be seen as dangerous short termism and as a barrier to long-term inclusive development, he said. It is not just the resources that are a source of development but also the potential for local industry to be built around the extraction of resources.

Extraction industries offer huge opportunities for job creation and skill enhancement to improve the lives of ordinary Africans, said Doepel. He is convinced that many of the skills required by the extractive industries are transferable and could be utilised to help generate and expand economic activity in developing countries with an emerging industrial base.

“Mechanical engineers and civil engineers can work on building an open cut mine and just as easily work on water purification plants and roads and bridges,” he said.

Economic benefits can be achieved “as long as the extraction industry is deeply linked to the national and local economies and the ‘mining spend’ is captured rather than ‘exported’ along with the ore,” said Doepel.

There are many opportunities ahead for enterprising Africans to play a role in their country’s development based on the continent’s untapped resources, said Francis Steven George, CEO of Innovation Africa, an organisation that provides consulting to companies and institutions on how to exploit business opportunities for development and poverty reduction.

“Citizens can benefit by participating in the exploration of the resources. They can gain employment or can become suppliers or service providers to the industry. Governments need to help by creating an enabling environment. For example, investment in the education system to enable the relevant degree programmes to meet the needs of the industry, or by providing soft loans to local entrepreneurs who participate in the industry,” he told IPS.

Countries like Ethiopia, which has recently discovered vast mineral reserves such as gold, tantalum, oil and potash, are taking inspiration from countries like Botswana as they strive to maximise development opportunities. In early 2012 Botswana demanded that diamond company De Beers move much of its diamond-sorting operations from the United Kingdom to Botswana in an effort to localise value addition.

Citing this as a good example of how mining can enrich a country, the Ethiopian government seems determined to exercise maximum transparency and caution to ensure mining revenues benefit its population of over 90 million, which makes it Africa’s second-most populous nation.

“We want our country to benefit from our resources in the broadest sense. Development for all and not just a few is our goal,”  Ethiopia’s State Minister of Mines Tolesa Shagi told IPS.

British Nyota Minerals is set to be the first foreign company to receive a mining license to extract gold on the basis of its own exploration in western Ethiopia in the coming months.

Recent surveys indicate an estimated 500 tonnes of gold reserves in Ethiopia. According to mining experts, extraction of gold could rise to 40 tonnes a year from just over four tonnes last year, earning the country around 1.7 billion dollars based on current commodity prices.

Ethiopia is planning to sign up to Publish What You Pay, an international initiative subscribed to by over 70 countries, early next year. It holds governments of resource-rich nations accountable for the management of revenues from extraction industries.

Organisations like the Revenue Watch Institute are emphatic about the need for transparency from governments to ensure countries make the most of their resources and embark on a course of sustainable development that improves the lives of ordinary Africans.

“After the deals are signed, governments must regulate operations, maximise complex revenue streams like profit taxes, manage these revenues which are very volatile, and spend them on valuable development projects. Across all these functions there are risks of corruption, of decisions driven by patronate, favoritism and short-term political considerations,” said Gillies.

The message is clear – by having 30 percent of the world’s extractive resources, Africa has one of the greatest opportunities it will ever have to graduate its people out of poverty.

Mohammed Baker (70) has been fishing for half a century. He remembers the days when Palestinian fishers could go out to sea without fear of being attacked, arrested or killed. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Dec 17 2012 (IPS)

Shortly after Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement on Nov. 21, the Israeli navy abducted 30 Palestinian fishers from Gaza’s waters, destroyed and sank a Palestinian fishing vessel, and confiscated nine fishing boats in the space of four days.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that fourteen fishers from a single family, stationed just three nautical miles from the coast of the Gaza Strip, were all arrested on Dec. 1.

Some fishers were only two miles off Gaza’s coast when they were attacked with machine gun fire and arrested by the Israeli Navy. Ranging from the ages of 14 to 52, the majority in their late teens and early twenties, these fishers hail from some of Gaza’s poorest families.

According to Mifleh Abu Riyala, a representative of the General Syndicate of Marine Fishers, the ceasefire has made no difference to Palestinian fishers.

Palestinians are allowed, under the current Israel-Hamas ceasefire, “to fish six miles out”, he told IPS, “but the Israeli gunboats still attack us, whether we are six or three miles out.”

The Oslo accords granted Palestinian fishers the right to fish twenty nautical miles out at sea, a right the Israeli navy has unilaterally vetoed, downsizing the fishing “limits” since the 1990s to a mere three miles, until this past November’s ceasefire allowed a slight increase, to six nautical miles.

“But there are no fish at six miles, the sea floor is still sandy. It is only after seven miles out that the sea floor becomes rocky and the fish are plentiful,” Abu Riyala stressed.

“It is our sea, in order to live we must be able to access it.”

Mohammed Baker (70) has been fishing for half a century. He remembers the days when Gaza’s sea was open to Palestinian fishers, and when there was no fear of being attacked, arrested or killed by the Israeli navy.

Two of his sons, Amar (34) and Omar (21), were among the 14 fishers attacked by Israeli gunboats on Dec 1. The Israeli navy has still not returned their “hassaka” (a small fishing boat).

Like many of Gaza City’s fishers, the Bakers live in the Beach Camp, one of the Strip’s most overcrowded refugee camps.

Amar, married with six children, was still being held by Israeli authorities on Dec. 5 when his father, Mohammed, recounted the events of that fateful day to IPS.

“Israeli gunboats and smaller zodiacs surrounded my sons’ hassaka and made them strip naked, jump into the sea, and swim to one of the Israeli boats,” Mohammed told IPS.

“They put a bag on Amar’s head and took him to Ashdod. Amar has asthma, I’m very worried about his health.” Mohammed has still not been able to speak with his son.

Four days after Amar’s abduction, Mohammed went to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), whose work includes visiting and monitoring Palestinian prisoners’ conditions in Israeli jails and detention centres.

“They told me Amar is forbidden from talking with anyone. He is under interrogation,” Mohammed said.

Amar now stands accused of “being part of the Palestinian resistance”, a charge based on his previous job of making coffee and tea for Hamas officers.

“My son was a ‘kitchen boy’. People who work for the government are still civilians,” Mohammed stressed, echoing the tenets of international humanitarian law.

Stripped of their only boat and a member of their family, the Bakers face even more dire circumstances than ever.

“There is no ceasefire for fishers. We’re ordinary people, we work to earn just 30 or 40 shekels (seven to 10 dollars) per day to feed our families,” Mohammed lamented.

Khadr Baker (20) was lucky that he was not killed during an encounter with the Israeli navy on Nov. 28, during which his boat was gunned down as punishment for fishing just over three miles from the Beach Camp coast.

His father, Jamal Baker (50), spoke to IPS about Khadr’s arrest, explaining that Israeli gunboats appeared without warning and began firing at close range on Khadr’s small motorboat.

“The Israelis ordered the four fishers on Khadr’s hassaka to strip and jump into the sea, which is extremely cold this time of year,” Jamal told IPS.

“They made Khadr tread water for half an hour, and kept machine gunning around him,” said Jamal. The hassaka eventually caught fire and exploded, sinking soon after.

“The Israelis took Khadr on their boat, handcuffed him naked, and beat and interrogated him for three hours, accusing him of working with the Palestinian resistance,” the boy’s father told IPS.

Without their boat, the family of ten has no income. “I sold my nets so that we can eat,” Jamal said simply.

PCHR reported other attacks on fishers that day: in one case, the navy attacked and abducted five fishers from the al-Hessi family, damaging – and eventually confiscating – the large fishing trawler they were on. The boat has not yet been returned.

In February 2009, Rafiq Abu Riyala, then 23, was shot in his back – by an Israeli soldier standing less than 20 metres away – with a dum-dum bullet, which explodes on impact.

The hassaka fisher was only two miles off Gaza’s coast when attacked. One of two breadwinners in his family, Rafiq Abu Riyala cannot now fish in cold weather. “The shrapnel bits in my back make it too painful when it is cold out,” he told IPS.

Mahar Abu Amia (40) has sixteen people to provide for. “My wife fishes also,” he told IPS. “But we have no chance: we reach six miles and they shoot, we go only three miles and they shoot. What is this ceasefire? It means nothing for us.”

(END)

The immigration detention centre of Lesznowola, situated in a forest about 15 kilometers south of the Polish capital Warsaw in a former military compound, is notorious for its poor conditions. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu
WARSAW, Dec 16 2012 (IPS)

A recent hunger strike, involving over 70 migrants detained in heavily guarded centers across Poland, is forcing the country to face its new responsibilities as a migration hub within the European Union.

Poland currently has six detention centres, which host ‘irregular migrants’, or foreigners caught living illegally in Poland, awaiting deportation after their asylum claims have been rejected or after getting caught trying to cross the Polish border that leads deeper into the EU.

At the end of October, an estimated 375 migrants were being held in these centres. Among them were 33 children, including at least one year-old baby; three of the children were unaccompanied.

Georgians and Russians of Chechen nationality currently make up the bulk of migrants in Poland, though more recently Syrians, too, have had a significant presence in detention centers.

The hunger strikers, mostly Georgians and Chechens, were demanding better conditions in the camps, but also disputed the use of detention as a means of addressing the thorny issue of migration.

The protest was coordinated across four camps: Lesznowola, Bialystok, Biala Podlaska, and Przemysl. It lasted only a few days, ending when humanitarian organisations visited the camps and promised to work with the institutions’ management on improving living conditions.

The detention camps in Poland have functioned under the authority of the National Border Guards since 2008 and conditions inside vary widely.

Lesznowola, situated in a forest about 15 kilometers south of Warsaw in a former military compound, is notorious for its poor conditions. Biala Podlaska, located in the eastern town by the same name, close to the border with Belarus, is a modern facility constructed in 2008 and funded almost entirely by the European Union.

At first glance, the two camps could not differ more. The narrow corridors at Lesznowola are replaced by shiny, freshly painted spaces in Biala Podlaska.

The non-English, non-Russian-speaking management staff at Lesznowola stand in stark contrast to a highly communicative management team – equipped with translators – at Biala Podlaska, where staff in perfectly pressed uniforms roam around the corridors wearing professional smiles.

Biala Podlaska is equipped with a green football field, while Lesznowola only has plans to eventually build one on part of its cemented courtyard surrounded by barbed-wire-topped walls.

But upon entering the halls of either institution, it quickly becomes clear that, for those living behind bars almost round the clock – with the exception of mealtimes, exercises and the occasional educational activity – the situation is exactly the same.

At the first sound of visitors approaching, adults and children stick their heads out of the cells that line the hallway, their hands and faces pushed against the bars, curious, waiting. Even a mundane visit becomes a noteworthy event in a place where nothing happens.

Kicked around “like a ball”

Thirty-six-year-old Iranian Leila Naeimi, who was released in early October after spending two months in Lesznowola, has harsh words about the conditions there.

“Everywhere you see only walls, everywhere the guards are with us, they treat us like animals,” she told IPS, adding that guards make daily inspections at 6 a.m., entering the rooms without even knocking on the door.

Naeimi, who she fled Iran fearing prosecution for her work as a women’s rights activist, says that she has often been the target of sexually abusive comments from border guards, both when entering Poland and also in the detention centre.

She claims basic hygiene products were never sufficient and that the food served in the centre was of poor quality.

Her greatest grievance, however, has to do with the EU’s attitude towards migrants in general.

“They can send you from country to country whenever they want, they think they can play with people’s lives…as if I was a ball they can just kick around.

“We need normal lives, we wouldn’t have left our countries if things had been good there. I’ve had too many problems just because I’m Iranian, just because of my nationality,” Naeimi lamented.

Osman Rafik, a 33-year-old Pakistani man who was detained in Bialystok at the time of this interview, has already spent eight months in the camp, but decided against joining the migrants’ hunger strike, claiming its goals were too “ambitious” and “diverse”.

While he did complain about conditions in the camp and even asked IPS for help with securing medicines, his primary concern was not with everyday life in the camp but with the arbitrary nature of migration policies.

“We keep being asked why we came to this country if we are from Pakistan, but they must understand that we are not criminals just because we crossed the borders into Europe.

“I would like to stay here in Poland if I (am) released,” he continued. “After all, it has been almost one year since I have been in this country and life is not so long, people live about 50 years on average. They (the immigration authorities) have already taken away one year of my life.

“We cannot go back to Pakistan, we have problems there, but authorities here do not understand that, they treat us all the same, whether we have problems back home or not,” he concluded.

*This story is the first of a two-part series on immigration in the European Union.

"War or no war, it is still a man's world out there,” says war widow Rajina Mary from Sri Lanka's northern Kilinochchi District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
DHARAN, Nepal, Dec 13 2012 (IPS)

Sita Tamang’s husband went missing sometime in 2004, two years before Nepal’s civil war came to an end. A native of Dharan, a town about 600 kilometres southeast of Kathmandu, Tamang waited seven years after his disappearance before she tried to claim compensation offered by the government after a 2006 peace deal ended this country’s bloodshed.

When she finally managed to get hold of government officials in Dharan overseeing compensation procedures, she was met with the thorny request that she “prove” her marriage to the father of her three children, whom she had lived with for a decade and a half.

As was customary, Tamang and her husband had gone through the traditional marriage ceremony but had not obtained any civil documents.

In addition to taking care of her three children, including two daughters, Tamang was saddled with the added burden of seeking the required paperwork before even beginning the bureaucratic process of securing compensation.

“That is the way things are here,” she told IPS simply. “Women will always have it a bit hard.”

Thousands of miles away, in northern Sri Lanka, Rajina Mary, a 38-year-old war widow with four children, ran into similar hurdles when she began constructing a new house with assistance from the Sri Lanka Red Cross in late 2010, about a year and a half after this country’s civil war ended.

“The labourers would not take orders or instructions from me because I was a woman. They are used to taking orders from men,” Mary told IPS, standing in front her house in the village of Selvanagar in the northern Kilinochchi district, deep in the former war zone.

When the workmen refused to follow her instructions, Mary and her children were forced to take over the construction themselves, digging most of the foundation and carrying hundreds of bricks and cement sacks.

“It was cheaper for us. But that is the way things are here, it is a very male-dominated society,” Mary said, echoing Tamang’s words.

Aid workers, counsellors and experts working in post-conflict regions in the two South Asian countries say the patriarchal nature of rural societies makes them unenviable locations for widows or female heads of households.

A woman remains pensive during a support group meeting for families of missing persons in the southeastern Nepali town of Biratnagar Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

“There is a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression. Most of these women live in isolation without anyone to talk to, even when they live among family,” Srijana Bhandari, a counsellor with the Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC) working in Dharan, told IPS.

After her husband disappeared in 2004, one woman struggled for seven years to send her son to school and seek assistance for her young daughter’s epileptic condition. It was only in November 2011, when WOREC began talking to her, that she finally opened up about the many challenges confronting women suddenly left to fend for themselves and their families.

Now, thanks to the advocacy group’s intervention, her son has a scholarship at the village school and she receives a monthly medical stipend for her daughter.

“Before we spoke with her, she was finding it really hard, there was no one to help her, some members of her family even looked at her as a burden,” Kamal Koirala, WOREC’s programme coordinator, told IPS.

Even on the rare occasions when women find new marriage prospects, they come under enormous pressure – ironically from their female in-laws – to reject the offer. As a result, many women end up eloping, leaving their children behind, WOREC officials said.

Koirala told IPS that women rarely, if ever, open up about pressure brought on them to turn to sex work, but said aid workers have strong suspicions that the practice is widespread.

The situation is not much different in Sri Lanka according to Saroja Sivachandran, who heads the Centre for Women and Development, a non-governmental organisation working on gender issues in the country’s northern Jaffna peninsula.

Despite a three-decade-long conflict in which many females fought alongside their male counterparts, especially among the ranks of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), northern Tamil society is still steeped in patriarchal values, Sivachandran told IPS.

“The problem is that now, single women or female heads of households – and there are thousands of them – have to compete with males for everything from jobs to housing assistance,” she said.

In both countries, scores of women were left to navigate the post-war landscape after the fighting ended.

The Nepali Red Cross lists 1401 persons as still missing, six years after the conflict ended. Officials say at least 90 percent of the families left behind are now headed by women, 80 percent of whom are mothers.

In Sri Lanka, the United Nations estimates that around 30,000 of the 110,000 families that have returned to the former war zone in the northern province are headed by women.

In 2010, the World Bank found that two-thirds of the participants in a cash for work programme worth 5.5 million dollars were women.

In fact, programme managers made special allowances for the women by offering more flexible working hours. The programme also paid elders who looked after children while their mothers or caregivers took part in the work scheme.

But the women who are faced with rebuilding their lives after decades of war, while also dealing with the suffocating customs and traditions of male dominance that date back generations, say there is very little chance of things changing.

“It was like this even during the fighting, why should it change when there is no fighting?” Mary asked.

(END)

The Desertec Industrial Initiative plans to install a network of solar thermal, photovoltaic, and wind plants across the Maghreb region. Credit: Green Prophet1/CC-BY-2.0

By Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Dec 12 2012 (IPS)

When the Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII), an alliance of 21 major European corporations, first unveiled plans to install a network of solar thermal, photovoltaic, and wind plants across the North African Maghreb region to generate electricity, the project was greeted as a ‘green utopia’.

Expected to generate 100 gigawatts by 2050, the project demanded an investment of 400 billion euros.

In a study released last summer, Desertec predicted that an integrated power system for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa would allow Europe to meet its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction target of 95 percent in the power sector by importing up to 20 percent of its electricity from the Maghreb, thus saving 33 billion euros per year.

Meanwhile, the project would enable Middle Eastern and North African countries to meet their own energy needs using the abundant solar and wind resources in the region, and achieve 50 percent of CO2 reductions in the power sector despite a massive increase in demand.

The region would benefit from an export industry worth up to 63 billion euros per year.

Now, three years since the project was announced, the Desertec dream is yet to be realised, and euphoria has given way to harsh criticisms ranging from accusations of incompetence to shortfalls in corporate governance.

The project has been nicknamed “desperate tec” by internal staff members discontent with its trajectory.

Huge potential

In a so-called White Book on the project, the DII claimed, “The long-term economic potential of renewable energy in EUMENA (Europe, Middle East and North Africa) is much larger than present demand, and the potential of solar energy dwarfs them all.”

Based on figures by German research institutes and the Club of Rome, the report estimates, “From each square kilometre (km²) of desert land, up to 250 gigawatts of electricity can be harvested each year using the technology of concentrating solar thermal power.”

Indeed, every square kilometre of land in MENA “receives an amount of solar energy that is equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of crude oil. A concentrating solar collector field with the size of Lake Nasser in Egypt (Aswan), of some 6,000 square kilometres, could harvest energy equivalent to the present Middle East oil production”.

Morocco, which will host the pilot project, has been especially keen to see the venture come to fruition, since it will have a huge impact on the local economy, particularly with regard to job creation in the renewables sector.

Back in 2009, ‘green networks’ were created in several cities around the kingdom, including in Casablanca. Comprised of small firms run by young professionals, these networks were designed to create the necessary infrastructure for the project.

“We have created companies, received training, but in reality nothing has happened yet,” Abdellah Benjdi, one of the young company heads, told IPS.

Ordinary citizens suffering from astronomical electricity bills in Morocco are eagerly awaiting the so-called ‘green utopia’.

But by all indications, their patience is not about to be rewarded.

Endless obstacles

Experts first received confirmation of Desertec’s difficulties on Nov. 7 in Berlin, during the official presentation of the first solar thermal, photovoltaic and wind plants to be installed in the southern-central Moroccan province of Ouarzazate, which are scheduled to deliver electricity by 2014.

Although construction plans have technically been sealed, they still depend on Spanish approval – Spain being the primary partner in the project – to allow the electricity generated at the site to be transported to Europe.

The Spanish government, battered by a grave economic recession, has so far been unable to confirm its support for the project, a situation that is unlikely to change given that Spain is a net exporter of electricity to Morocco and would not like to see this trend reversed by successful implementation of the pilot project in Ouarzazate, experts say.

The DII alliance includes the leading German Deutsche Bank and the Spanish transmission agent and grid operator, TSO Red Eléctrica.

“The business case for a Desertec Reference Project, prepared by (us) and the Moroccan Solar Agency Masen, has been extensively discussed for the past two years with Spanish companies, the TSO Red Eléctrica and the European Commission, and declared feasible,” DII CEO Paul van Son said during the presentation in Berlin.

The first project in Morocco led by the German energy giant RWE would comprise an installed capacity of 100 megawatts of photovoltaic and wind power.

A second project, using solar thermal plants and overseen by Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power International, will have an installed capacity of 160 megawatts.

Both plants are expected to be functional by 2014.

Van Son confirmed, “Investors have been found, initial subsidies are available, and industry wants to get involved.” But Spain refused to send representatives to the presentation in Berlin, and has so far failed to undersign the Morocco project.

Van Son is convinced that “the other partners in this negotiation, from Morocco and the EU, will be able to convince Spain,” since the Spanish government, too, stands to benefit from the project.

Lack of coordination

But Spain’s refusal is just one example of the enormous political, technical and financial coordination hurdles the venture must overcome.

Another indication of these difficulties came in late October, when the German electronics giant Siemens announced its withdrawal from the alliance, despite being a founding member of the DII back in 2009.

This move has been widely interpreted as proof that Desertec is failing.

According to Friedrich Fuehr, founding member of the board of directors at the Desertec Foundation, the DII “has been following the wrong strategy”.

Fuehr told IPS that DII’s main responsibility since 2009 was to conceive a political roadmap that could overcome all international coordination difficulties and solve the pressing questions of how subsidies and taxes would be implemented.

Fuehr, a prestigious German lawyer and business consultant, said that “a coalition of such powerful and capable private companies such as the Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, RWE and SCHOTT Solar should be able to formulate within three years the political framework they need to make Desertec come true”.

“But we are still waiting for this framework,” Fuehr said. “Instead, the DII has concentrated all its action in launching one single model project (in Ouarzazate).”

Fuehr lamented that the energy revolution the world needs in order to confront the realities of global warming “is already happening. But Desertec is not involved in it”.

*Abderrahim El Ouali contributed to this report from Casablanca.

For many Japanese women, old age is becoming synonymous with poverty and loneliness. Credit: Isado/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Dec 10 2012 (IPS)

When Hiroko Taguchi retired this past April, at the age of 64, from her job as an insurance sales agent, she joined the rapidly growing ranks of Japan’s aging women who now outnumber their male counterparts.

Taguchi, a divorcee who lives alone, is heavily dependent on her pension to support what will likely be a lengthy retirement, given that women in Japan live, on average, about seven years longer than men. A survey conducted earlier this year by the Health and Welfare Ministry revealed that women account for 87.3 percent of Japan’s record number of 50,000 centenarians.

“I am lucky I did not quit my job when I married, as was the norm for women of my age,” Taguchi told IPS. Indeed, she is one of a very small number of women in Japan for whom old age is not synonymous with poverty and loneliness.

Most of her contemporaries who were part-time workers or full-time homemakers in their youth and middle age now draw monthly public pensions of just 500 dollars or less – barely enough to cover their living costs.

A patriarchal social structure that has boxed women into the role of caretaker and homemaker is largely responsible for the vulnerable situation many old Japanese women now find themselves in.

According to government data, 70 percent of women leave their jobs when they start a family, returning to the workplace – often as part-time workers – only when their children are older; this pattern significantly reduces their chances of drawing a decent pension after retirement.

Additionally, the fact that women are experiencing increasingly long life spans means that many outlive their husbands and become entirely reliant on the state welfare system.

Social experts here say Taguchi’s sunset years provide a spotlight into the diverse issues that women in Japan’s graying society face today.

“More women than men face poverty in their old age given their (life spans) and lower incomes,” pointed out Professor Keiko Higuchi, an expert on aging populations at Tokyo Kasei University, as well as an advisor to the government on gender and policies that affect the elderly.

Aging in a patriarchal society

Japan currently has the world’s fastest aging society. Experts estimate that by 2025 more than 27 percent of the population will be over 65 years old.

If the present trends continue, experts predict that 40 percent of the senior population will be female: women are clocking 86.5 years, compared to 79.6 years for men.

Higuchi, who is also a prominent women’s rights activist, has lobbied the government long and hard to develop policies that meet the needs of elderly women.

Among the many issues that aging women face are loneliness, higher prospects of disability and growing poverty in a nation that is grappling with a huge public debt and threatening further cuts in social services and state welfare.

Official statistics from the Health and Welfare Ministry confirm this grim picture – government data shows that 80 percent of those over 65 years and living alone are women, mostly divorcees and widows.

Women also comprise 70 percent of the population in nursing homes, with poverty affecting 25 percent of the female population over 75 years compared to 20 percent among males.

The Ministry also reported that in 2011 there were almost 420,000 women over the age of 65 who depended on welfare handouts, compared to 324,000 men.

According to the prominent Japanese feminist Junko Fukazawa, who counsels women facing domestic violence – a risk she says is increasingly common for older women living with their husbands or sons – deep-rooted gender discrimination makes women even more vulnerable to the troubles of the sunset years.

Social traditions that have forced women to take care of the family while men worked outside “is the prime reason why women give up their jobs when they have children, (and end up with) lower paying jobs and financial instability in their old age”, Fukazawa told IPS.

“The situation is ironic,” she added, pointing out that those who have traditionally been the primary caregivers for young and old alike are now becoming a population that needs the most support.

The critical need to focus national aging policies on women is gaining traction around the world. A new report, ‘Aging in the Twenty-First Century’, released in September by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), calls on governments and other stakeholders to take heed of the mounting body of evidence that women are living longer than men, and adjust their national plans accordingly.

The report documented figures around the world that showed that for every 100 women aged 80 years and over, there are only 61 men.

Aging in Japan, the world’s third largest economy, illustrates some of these pressing issues against the backdrop of a shrinking working population, which is expected to plummet from 80 to 52 million by 2050.

For the younger generation of Japanese women, who are coming of age during a time of government austerity and desperate attempts to reduce public spending, the forecast is alarming.

Already this generation of women is beginning to feel the crunch of poverty, with Labour Department statistics pointing to a rise in lower-paid part-time female employment, a trend that indicates an erosion of retirement stability for a large portion of the labour force.

For Higuchi, “The current aging picture clearly shows that Japan’s economic growth policies have eroded traditional family values that protected old people and have been particularly unfair to women.”

Meanwhile, women like Taguchi are moving cautiously down the road. “Acutely aware that I would face a lonely future, I have saved for decades and will continue to do so. At least I can avoid poverty – I hope so, anyway.”

(END)

About 30,000 ships pass by Berbera Port in Somaliand every year from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Credit: Nicholas J Parkinson/IPS

By Matthew Newsome
HARGEISA, Dec 3 2012 (IPS)

As Somalia starts to emerge from its quagmire of instability and chaos, 20 years of relative peace and stability are starting to pay dividends for its close neighbour Somaliland, as this November it struck its first major oil deal since seceding from Somalia in 1991.

Anglo-Turkish company Genel Energy received its licence from the Somaliland government in early November to explore and develop oil and gas reserves after pledging almost 40 million dollars for exploration activities. Genel told IPS “Somaliland provides an exciting geological opportunity, and we look forward to starting work in the region.”

The independent oil and gas exploration and production company has become the first foreign investor to commit a significant amount of capital to the country’s energy sector, after initial investigations demonstrated “numerous oil seeps” confirming “a working hydrocarbon system,” a statement from Genel said.

Genel Energy, headed by erstwhile BP CEO Tony Hayward, is due to start exploration before the end of the year.

The driving force of this Horn of Africa nation’s economy has traditionally been livestock. With a huge livestock population that triples the 3.5 million civilian population, the livestock trade generates up to 65 percent of the country’s GDP, Somaliland’s Minister of Planning Dr. Saad Shire told IPS.

Livestock triples Somaliland’s 3.5 million civilian population and generates up to 65 percent of the country’s GDP. Credit: Brett Keller/IPS

With a limited national budget of 120 million dollars, the Somaliland government is now starting to receive much-needed revenue from foreign private investors to support its development.

Somaliland’s oil and gas reserves attracted the attention of other giant energy companies such as South African-based Ophir Energy, Jacka Resources Ltd of Australia, and Petrosoma Ltd, a subsidiary of British-based Prime Resources – all of whom announced their readiness to invest.

Somaliland has suffered from not being internationally recognised for the last 21 years. Its unconfirmed legal identity has hindered its economic prospects – few insurance companies have been prepared to insure foreign investors here. Subsequently, investors have tended to regard Somaliland as an economic leper.

For these reasons the country has also been ineligible for financial support from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

However, in 2012 Somaliland’s private sector started to progress against the odds.

At the beginning of the year, the first United Kingdom-Somaliland investment conference was held to stimulate bilateral trade recognition. And a 17-million-dollar Coca-Cola plant launched in May by a Djibouti conglomerate made it the largest private investment in Somaliland since 1991. Investors are seeing Coca-Cola’s decision to have an operation in the region as a positive statement about the country’s stable business climate.

Somaliland’s Berbera port is also expected to attract major investment in the coming years. It is considered the jewel in the country’s economic crown. Built originally by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the port currently serves as a major gateway for the country’s livestock exports. There is huge potential for it to be a juncture for oil and gas exports coming out of Africa’s landlocked countries like Ethiopia.

“We are strategically located – Berbera is located in a maritime lane – 30,000 ships pass by our port every year from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We can develop Berbera into a major port like Singapore – with container terminals, free zones, oil refineries, and services related to maritime business,” Shire said.

The port manager, Ali Omar Mohamed, is irrepressibly enthusiastic about the potential of expanding the port to make it a regional trading hub between Africa and the Middle East.

“This port can be as big and as successful as Djibouti. It is only a matter of time before it attracts investment to modernise and expand it so that we can have the increased capacity we need to realise its full economic potential,” he told IPS.

Shire is confident that if Somaliland produces a stronger commercial legal framework, with proper safety measures to increase private investor confidence, it will attract investment to transform the country into a prosperous flourishing democracy like Singapore. “We have stability and access to a port, we have what investors are looking for. If Singapore can do it, I think we can,” he said.

The lack of insurance available to investors is the biggest barrier to the country’s development according to J. Peter Pham of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, which was set up to help transform United States and European policy approaches to Africa.

“Without international recognition and the consequent access to international financial institutions, Somalilanders face serious obstacles to achieving the economic development which would ordinarily accrue to a state with their record of political stability and democratic governance,” he told IPS.

“It is not just a matter of accessing development assistance and international credit, but also of having a legal framework whereby potential private-sector partners could obtain insurance and otherwise secure their investments,” he said.

According to Pham, Somaliland will never be in a position to fully benefit from the natural resources it is endowed with as long as it is refused nationhood status.

“The potential natural resources of Somaliland – including hydrocarbons, minerals, and fisheries – cannot be really tapped in the absence of a resolution of the sovereignty question.”

The urgent need for foreign investment was highlighted in a 2012 to 2016 national development plan produced by the government in December 2011. It outlines the need for overdue investment in the country’s infrastructure such as road building and waste disposal. The total capital required to fund this plan is 1.19 billion dollars.

According to Shire, the bulk of the investment for this is expected to come from external sources like aid donors and foreign investors.

However, there is a danger that without prompt recognition from the international community, development will be too slow and may cause sections of the population to become disaffected and vulnerable to groups like Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab.

According to Pham, the international community’s inertia in responding to the issue of Somaliland’s nationhood is placing the country in clear and present danger and making it vulnerable to influence from the Islamist terrorist group.

“What the international community needs to understand is that unless something is done to spring Somaliland from the limbo to which it has been consigned, things may not remain all that smooth.

“A growing population of young people whose prospects are limited by the constraints on economic development may find themselves a receptive audience for voices very different from the farsighted leaders who built Somaliland from the ruins of the former Somalia,” he said.

Teenagers who are known to be HIV positive are treated like social pariahs, often due to lack of information among their peers. Credit: Letuka Mahe/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Nov 29 2012 (IPS)

It all started with a fight, one that would change his life forever.

It was in that moment of fighting with another teenage boy that Cedric Owino from the sprawling Mathare slum, one of Kenya’s biggest informal settlements, accidentally discovered that he was HIV positive.

Until then it had been a secret his grandmother had kept from him – for 15 years.

“While we were fighting, the mother of the other boy started shouting that I might scratch her son and infect him with HIV,” Owino, 15, tells IPS.

Consequently, a bitter argument ensued between Owino and his grandmother, who is his guardian, since he is an orphan. She confirmed that he has been HIV positive since he was a baby.

“Disclosure is not easy,” Mwema Omollo, Owino’s grandmother, tells IPS. “If you tell your child, you fear that it will change how they live. People are still very much afraid of HIV. My daughter refused to take antiretroviral (ARV) drugs when she discovered that she was HIV positive. I didn’t want this to become Cedric’s fate too.”

Her daughter was afraid that if she did take ARVs, people in her community who dispensed the medication would realise her status.

Since he found out, Owino has twice attempted suicide.

“My family knew I was infected, why tell me that the drugs I take are for asthma, while they know it’s because I am HIV positive?” he asks. He dropped out of grade eight at the Young Stars Academy soon after discovering his status.

Owino is not the only teenager struggling to come to terms with his status. Anthony Andega, another HIV positive 15-year-old, also tried to commit suicide when he found out two years ago.

He cut himself with a knife. But because of the stigma surrounding the virus, people refused to come to his aid. A friend of Andega’s later told him that even though he had been bleeding profusely, people refused to touch or help him.

“No one wants to touch where you have touched. You become isolated,” Andega tells IPS. Not only that, but the news of his status spread.

“In this neighbourhood, we go to the same schools. If people know you have HIV, this information is spread all over school,” he says.

The Kenya Population Data Sheet says stigma towards adolescents and teenagers living with HIV is high, with “55 percent of adolescents interviewed indicating that they preferred that the HIV status of their family members be kept secret.”

According to statistics from the Ministry of Health, of adults aged 15 to 64 years, an estimated 7.1 percent, or 1.4 million, are living with HIV in Kenya. Further, among youth aged 15 to 24 years, 3.8 percent are infected, rivalling older adults aged 50 to 64, whose prevalence is five percent.

Demonstrators against the suspension of Round 11 of Global Funding for Aids, TB and Malaria, earlier in the year. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Doctors Without Borders, which has worked in Mathare with caregivers to improve the rate of disclosure among families affected by HIV, reports that only two percent of family members disclose their status to each other.

It is an issue of concern. Ann Mburu, a nurse who works for Adolescents Count Today (ACT), a project targeting HIV positive teenagers or those who have been affected by HIV, says “the number of HIV positive adolescents is likely to increase as most adolescents practice sex with their peers without any knowledge of their status.”

“Since parents and guardians don’t easily disclose to older children who are infected, HIV/AIDS will remain a big blow to the community with increased stigmatisation and discrimination due to the secrecy,” she says

Family Health Options Kenya (FHOK) has rolled out ACT in Thika in Central Kenya, and in Eldoret and Nakuru in the Rift Valley region.

“Despite 22 percent of boys and 11 percent of girls having had sex by the age of 15, 60 percent of adolescents considered themselves not to be at risk of HIV infection,” explains Esther Muketo, programme manager at FHOK. National figures are unavailable.

Paediatrician Dr. Alice Muchemi has seen many teenagers grapple with their HIV status.

“Teenage years are often difficult, self-confidence is usually fragile. Rejection from the opposite sex is often viewed as a tragedy. Their bodies are also hungry to indulge in sex. But teenagers who are known to be HIV positive are treated like social pariahs, often due to lack of information among their peers,” Muchemi tells IPS.

Kenya’s National Guidelines for HIV Testing and Counselling permit health workers to inform children “who are pregnant, married, or sexually active” of their HIV status. But this does not always happen.

“Since sexually active children do not always disclose that they are having sex, and because it’s not expected that they are, they are also not told that they are HIV positive,” Muchemi explains.

Before discovering that he was HIV positive, Owino had been sexually active for a year and had only used a condom on one occasion.

“Just like most boys here, we have sex when an opportunity presents itself. I thought of HIV as a disease for grown-ups,” Owino justifies.

Now that he knows his status he has not attempted to contact his former partners. “Mathare is a big slum, I don’t know where these girls live now. Even if people know about my status, I am not going to talk about it,” he says.

According to Plan Kenya, which carried out a study among HIV positive adolescents aged 10 to 19 years in Nairobi and the Nyanza region, “most HIV positive adolescents are or intend to be involved in sexual relationships. More than four-fifths have been in a sexual relationship and more than two-thirds of these are still in a relationship.” Nyanza has the highest prevalence of HIV in Kenya, almost twice the national prevalence at 15.3 percent.

Paul Ndegwa, an HIV positive activist, says that while the government is succeeding in its fight against paediatric HIV, it is largely ignoring the needs of HIV positive teenagers. According to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, there has been a 40 percent reduction in new infections among children in Kenya.

“The problem is in the transition into adolescence and teenage years. You are dealing with young people who are at an age where they don’t communicate well. The needs of HIV positive teenagers are real and they are ignored just the same way the sexual and reproductive health needs of teens in general are ignored,” he tells IPS.

By Busani Bafana
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 29 2012 (IPS)

South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety’s call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified maize. “I eat genetically modified maize, which I have been growing on my farm for more than seven years, and I am still alive,” he declared.

Musi, 57, a maize farmer in the Fun Valley area of Olifantsvlei, outside Johannesburg, and a beneficiary of South Africa’s Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development programme, has embraced the science of biotechnology with gusto.

“What have changed are my yields and my income.” He said that he earned about 225 dollars more per hectare for his GM maize crop than he did when farming ordinary maize.

He is also a member of The Truth About Trade, which describes itself on its official website as “a nonprofit advocacy group led by American farmers – narrowly focused, issue specific – as we support free trade and agricultural biotechnology.”

“For me it has largely been the exposure to biotechnology issues. They are not a seed company and the issue we are talking about here is GM seed so I do not see how that means I am influenced by them and in my views.”

He said that he was helping reduce food insecurity in South Africa by growing and selling GM maize.

“Biotechnology has a very big role in food security,” Musi told IPS. “The climate has changed and I know that with drought-tolerant seed I have a tool to fight climate change. I cannot guarantee that the rain will come and I if plant crops which are not drought tolerant, I could get into debt and lose my farm.”

South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety’s call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified maize. Courtesy: Busani Bafana

A report in April 2012 by the Climate Emergency Institute titled “The Impact of Climate Change on South Africa” said the country is experiencing a gradual, yet steady, change in climate with temperatures showing a significant increase over the last 60 years. Temperatures in South Africa are predicted to rise in costal regions by one to two degrees Celsius by 2050.

But the ACB does not believe that GMOs can deliver food security on the continent, specifically in South Africa, a leading African producer of GMOs.

The organisation is behind an African Civil Society statement calling for a ban on GM maize in South Africa and on the continent, which it hopes to submit to African governments. To date 656 signatures have been collected on the online statement, including those of 160 African organisations.

“We have sent an open letter to our minister of agriculture in October to ban GM maize in South Africa,” Haidee Swanby, an officer with ACB, told IPS.

“We (South Africa) have been cultivating, importing and exporting GM crops for 14 years with absolutely no impact on food security whatsoever. In fact, a bag of mealie meal is 84 percent more expensive than it was four or five years ago due to international prices and the extensive use of maize for biofuel production.”

Swanby said there was a need to improve access to food, by addressing poverty, unemployment and issues around land tenure, service delivery, infrastructure, access to markets, and unfair global trade practices.

“Genetically modified food has never been labelled in South Africa so there is no way to know if it is causing health problems,” Swanby said, calling for a rigorous scientific study into the health implications of GM food.

“If someone is getting sick, how are they going to trace it back to GMOs when they don’t know they’re eating them? We want more science, not less!”

The ACB has a supporter in Friends of the Earth International, which is also lobbying for a GMO-free Africa.

The organisation’s coordinator Nnimmo Bassey told IPS that GMOs do not deliver on the promises made by the biotechnology industry. He argued that hunger in Africa is used as an excuse to contaminate and erode genetic diversity on the continent.

Bassey said that GM crops are neither more nutritious nor better yielding nor use fewer pesticides and herbicides. And he said they are unsafe for humans and for the environment.

“It is all about market colonisation,” Bassey told IPS. “GM crops would neither produce food security nor meet nutrition deficits. The way forward is food sovereignty – Africans must determine what crops are suitable culturally and environmentally. Up to 80 percent of our food needs are met by smallholder farmers. These people need support and inputs for integrated agro-ecological crop management. Africa should ideally be a GMO-free continent.”

Friends of the Earth International cites failed GMO experiments in Africa with Bt cotton (a strain of cotton that had the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium inserted into its genetic code) in Burkina Faso and South Africa where they had been touted as the crops to pull smallholder farmers out of poverty.

Global developer and supplier of plant genetics, including hybrid seed, DuPont Pioneer, said that the effect of switching from saved seed to hybrid seed is dramatic.

The company’s vice president responsible for Asia, Africa and China, Daniel Jacobi, told IPS that of the 24 million hectares of maize planted annually in sub-Saharan Africa, about a third was hybrid seed.

Furthermore, farmers get a fuller yield from hybrid seeds by using fertiliser and agronomic practices, reducing post-harvest losses and getting the crop to market, he maintained.

“We can spend a long time and gain a lot of productivity in sub-Saharan Africa by doing all those things without ever getting to the introduction of GMOs,” Jacobi said following a tour of the DuPont Pioneer facility in the Midwestern U.S. state of Iowa.

“I think we tend to get wrapped up in the debate about GMOs and how multinational companies are forcing GMOs down the throats of local farmers. I think we ought to be focused on helping farmers do the best job they can do today by using hybrid seed and let us not let those priorities get lost in the big philosophical debate about GMOs.”

AfricaBio, a biotechnology stakeholder association formed in 1999, says a vast majority of the South African population are struggling to meet their daily needs and GM products offer a proven solution.

“For 14 consecutive seasons, South Africans have planted and consumed foods and food products derived from approved GM crops as part of their diet and no confirmed cases of harm to consumers of GM foods have been reported,” AfricaBio chief executive officer Nompumelelo Obokoh told IPS.

Meanwhile, Musi remained unhappy about the call to ban GM maize. “Africans should come to a realisation that all this is happening in the name of contraceptive imperialism. Africa missed out during the Green Revolution – we must not miss the Gene Revolution. Let Africans decide for Africa,” he said.

(*Adds information that Musi is a member of The Truth About Trade. Story first moved on Nov. 23, 2012)

Turkana women in Kenya. Turkana district was one of the hardest-hit areas in the Horn of Africa in the 2011 drought that affected the entire region. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
DOHA, Nov 28 2012 (IPS)

The skyscraper Qatari capital city of Doha is a far cry from Cecilia Kibe’s home in Turkana district, a remote area in Kenya inhabited by mostly nomadic communities and pastoralists hit hard by the effects of climate change.

But the agriculturalist-cum-sociologist has come here to the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP18) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), thanks to funding from the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice (MRFCJ), to sit and listen as scientists, researchers, top government officials and activists argue their case.

Kibe is on a mission – to gather as much knowledge as possible to share with the women in her community. Turkana district was one of the hardest-hit areas in the Horn of Africa in the 2011 drought that affected the entire region.

According to Oxfam International, Turkana district has gone without good rain for about five years. And this has affected the community severely. In 2011 the United Nations news agency IRIN reported “Turkana has experienced malnutrition rates of up to 37.4 percent; the highest recorded in 20 years and more than double the U.N. World Health Organization emergency threshold of 15 percent.”

Back in Turkana district, Kibe runs an information-sharing network that she started because she refused to allow herself and the other women in her village to continue suffering from hunger as they repeatedly lost their crops in the prolonged drought.

“Most women in African rural communities still attribute the impact of climate change to different myths, including that God is upset with people,” Kibe told IPS.

“I work with 4,000 champions (women) who educate their fellow community members and help them come up with adaptation strategies,” she said. She named her organisation Kenya Climate Justice Women Champions, and has now expanded her network to benefit over 3,000 households.

“In turn the women identify their areas of need and, based on the information I get from international conferences such as this one, we start projects that address those challenges,” said Kibe. The projects are funded by MRFCJ.

She said that often the information from conferences such as COP 18 does not filter down to the people most affected by climate change.

“We need to get the information from this conference to help them understand what exactly is happening,” said Kibe.

Top of Kibe’s priority list of things to tackle is food insecurity. And the cultivation of cassava, a drought-tolerant crop, has been identified as part of the strategy to combat this. Previously people in Kibe’s area grew maize, which often failed because of the lack of rain.

Another priority is addressing water insecurity, Kibe said. Back home, women and children have to travel long distances to fetch water, which in many cases is contaminated.

“We have introduced solar water cleaning, which is a technology that uses a device that easily purifies water when placed in the sun,” explained Kibe. “It’s just a press of a button.”

Women are also encouraged to plant five trees each to combat carbon emissions.

What Kibe is doing is important. According to Trish Glazebrook, a researcher from the University of Texas:  “Knowledge transfer is very important because we know that in as much as women need to adapt, they also have to mitigate through climate smart technologies for their farming and sources of domestic energy.”

She told IPS that women in sub-Saharan Africa are not only victims of climate change, but are also contributing to pollution because they lack the technology to improve their farming methods and remain heavily dependent on agriculture, a sector that contributes to global emissions.

But Robinson, who was the first female president of Ireland, said Kibe’s story was a compelling case of why women should be adequately represented at the COP 18.

“A lot of rural women like Cecilia are doing a lot of work on the ground to adapt, but they are hardly recognised and they work with limited resources,” Robinson said.

Speaking at the first ever Gender Day at COP 18 on Nov. 27, Robinson called for more active participation of women in the conference. For more than 10 years gender organisations have advocated aggressively for this day to be recognised in the climate negotiation process.

“We need gender balance in all the UNFCCC bodies, including the attendance,” she said.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, concurred.

“It’s very dumb not to maximise the participation of a group that is over 50 percent of the world population,” she said.

She said she was proud that the gender text was included in the UNFCCC process, although the words needed to be transformed into action.

Mozambican Minister of Environment Acinda Abreu said that society as a whole needed a mind shift to allow women to make meaningful contributions at all levels of the climate change process.

“Adaptation strategies should prioritise the farmers, particularly women who are mainly into subsistence agriculture, and the communities they live in,” she said.

The special advisor at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Francois Rogers, told IPS that women from all walks of life have to be adequately trained to give them the capacity to participate in policy-formulation processes at the local, regional and international levels.

“It should not be just about meeting quotas, but we should ensure that they have confidence in understanding the issues so that they can fully participate in the decision making,” he said.

Signs in Chinese reflect China’s heavy participation in the construction of the new Angola. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
LUANDA, Nov 27 2012 (IPS)

“In Luanda there are no matches.” This was the first line of a report written by Nobel Literature laureate Gabriel García Márquez in the Angolan capital in 1977.

Soap, milk, salt and aspirin were other products that were hard to come by in a city that, he wrote, “surprised” visitors with “its modern, shining beauty,” although it was actually “a dazzling empty shell.”

The emphasis that the Colombian writer put on the shortages suffered by the war-torn country injured the pride of the Angolans who read his report. But he effectively described the chaos inherited from Portuguese colonialism and the war of independence, a year and a half after Angola became independent.

Today, 35 years later, it is the excesses and glaring contrasts that shock the visitor to this city in southwestern Africa. Shiny new cars on brand-new roads and highways lined by thousands of still-empty or half-built office buildings, apartment blocks and residential towers stand in sharp contrast to the sprawling slums around the city.

Signs on construction sites written in Chinese clearly reflect the Asian giant’s high level of participation in the construction of today’s new Angola.

The most ambitious project carried out by companies from China is the Nova Cidade de Kilamba (Kilamba New City), a huge development designed to house half a million people, 20 km south of downtown Luanda.

When it is completed, the new neighbourhood will have more than 80,000 apartments built for large families – the norm in Angola – in buildings five to 13 storeys high. The development is also to be fitted out with dozens of schools, child care centres, health clinics and shops.

Nearly one-quarter of the buildings have been completed. But almost all of them are empty, even though more than 3,000 apartments were already available when the development was inaugurated in July 2011.

Also involved in building the new city are Brazilian firms, especially construction giant Odebrecht, which is in charge of key projects like electricity and water grids and the construction of roads.

The foreign presence in the massive new developments “is not something to be admired, because it shows that there are no national companies with the capacity to build them,” said one of Angola’s most prominent writers, Artur Pestana, better known as Pepetela, who is also a professor of sociology.

“The Chinese build faster, they work round-the-clock shifts, and they offer almost interest-free long-term loans,” he said. But they employ few Angolan workers and “there are many complaints about the quality of their construction work,” he added.

Meanwhile, Brazilian companies “apparently learned their lesson from a few initial fiascos which made them the butt of national jokes, and they now stand out for the quality of their work,” which enables them to compete with the Chinese, said the author, who has published many historical novels that are critical of the government of José Eduardo dos Santos, president since 1979.

Odebrecht, a Brazilian consortium that operates in 35 countries, became a leader in infrastructure works in Angola after 1984, when it signed a contract for the construction of the Capanda hydroelectric dam on the Kwanza river, 360 km from the capital, built to supply Luanda.

The civil war, which broke out after independence, led to lengthy delays in construction of the dam, which did not begin to generate electricity until 2004.

The end of the armed conflict in 2002 unleashed a wave of investment in the reconstruction and modernisation of Angola, fuelled by the country’s oil revenue and Chinese credit.

Besides the construction of other large hydropower dams, Odebrecht is involved in the production of sugar, ethanol and electricity from sugarcane, and is expanding the waterworks and sanitation in Luanda, while building condominiums, roads and highways.

It is also dedicated to diamond mining, and controls the chain of 29 Nosso Super supermarkets.

It was the first non-oil company from Brazil to begin to operate in Angola with a “long-term outlook,” said Victor Fontes, director general of the Angolan company Elektra, which specialises in power and water grids. He said this had the positive effect of attracting other firms also interested in the long haul, instead of just short-term opportunities.

The director of institutional relations at Odebrecht Angola, Alexandre Assaf, told IPS that the consortium is committed to “continuity” in Angola, above and beyond the effects of wars or the global economic crisis.

Five years ago, only nine percent of the “strategic posts” in the company were held by Angolans – a proportion that has risen to 41 percent, he noted, to illustrate the company’s commitment to local development.

In that group, Assaf included not only directors and managers, but also young university graduates who have been hired by the company to be trained as future leaders.

But Elektra’s Fontes argued that Odebrecht’s “near-monopoly position in some sectors hinders local initiative” by standing in the way of the development of small and medium-sized local firms that could work on smaller-scale projects, such as the upgrading of streets and neighbourhoods, that do not require the involvement of transnational corporations.

In addition, the country pays “more than what is reasonable for certain infrastructure works and services” carried out by the Brazilian company, which are of high quality but are also costly, said Fontes.

He acknowledged, however, that Odebrecht “has brought good management and performance strategies, and the best in the construction industry in the area of workplace safety,” for example.

The challenge faced by foreign and Angolan companies is addressing the serious problems that have accumulated in Luanda, where the population has grown exponentially.

In 1970, Luanda was home to just over 475,000 people, according to the last census carried out by the Portuguese colonial government. Today, the population of the city is over seven million.

But the condominiums and residential towers mushrooming around the city have not curbed the housing shortage, because those in need of homes cannot afford to purchase or rent the new units, which were built for a middle class that is still small. And despite the large number of empty housing units, the prices have not gone down.

A lack of piped water and electricity services are also common complaints in the midst of the construction fever.

The solution is on its way, according to government plans, whose strategic projects are being carried out by Odebrecht. But it will take years to silence the back-up generators heard all around the city during the frequent blackouts, and to ensure a steady supply of piped water.

Seven-year-old Nisma Kalajar from Shijaiya in Gaza City has stopped talking after suffering head fractures in a fall from the third floor during an Israeli attack. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS.

By Mel Frykberg
GAZA CITY, Nov 27 2012 (IPS)

As Israel and Hamas separately celebrate the ceasefire and their “victory” over the other following Israel’s blistering eight-day military assault on the Gaza strip, civilians continue to pay the price.

According to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) more than 160 Palestinians lost their lives by Nov. 21, the last day of the bloody confrontation between the world’s third most powerful military and Palestinian fighters. The dead included at least 103 civilians, 33 of them children. More than a thousand Palestinians were wounded, including 971 civilians – 274 of them children.

Three of the Palestinian civilians killed were journalists who died after repeated Israeli attacks on media buildings where Palestinian and foreign journalists were working. Six Israelis were killed as indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza targeted Israeli cities.

But the war and its consequences have been the hardest for Gaza’s children, unable to comprehend the volatility and the political intricacies in the place they call home.

“Mamma, mamma,” cries Muhammad Abu Zour, 7, in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza city. His head is bandaged and one of his eyes is purple and badly swollen. His eyes flicker upwards and backwards.

“There is a possibility that he has severe brain damage as there is internal bleeding within his skull,” nurse Sana Thabat, 23, from Gaza’s Shifa Hospital tells IPS.

Muhammad was wounded last week after Israeli F-16 fighter jets targeted his family home as the occupants slept. The shelling killed two women from the Abu Zour family; Sahar Fadi Abu Zour, 20, Nisma Helmi Abu Zour, 21; and Muhammad’s little brother Eyad Abu Zour, 5.

The Israeli jets had been targeting the home of an alleged militant next door. The Zeitoun neighbourhood is densely populated by civilians and far from any Hamas military compounds.

In another case of Israeli “collateral damage” 11 members of the Dalu family, including four women and four children, were killed when an Israeli missile hit a four-storey house belonging to Jamal Mahmoud Yassin al-Dalu 52, in the north of Gaza city last Sunday.

Alia Kalajar, 23, from Shijaiya in Gaza weeps silently as she holds the hand of her seven-year-old daughter Nisma. “Nisma has stopped talking and we don’t know if she will ever talk again. She has a head fracture and is bleeding internally too,” Kalajar tell IPS.

The little girl fell from her home on the third floor of a building that was struck by an Israeli drone. Nineteen Palestinian civilians were injured in that strike.

Abdel Azis Ashour, 6, from Zeitoun has shrapnel injuries in both his legs. He was playing with his seven brothers and sisters last Tuesday when an Israeli drone targeted his neighbourhood.

His cousin was killed and five other civilians were injured. But the little boy remains cheerful despite the grim circumstances and the pain he is in. “I’m not afraid of the Israelis,” he tells IPS as he flashes the V for victory sign.

Shifa Hospital staff has been forced to work long hours with limited medical equipment and dwindling supplies of medicines.

“I’ve seen so many dead and injured children. In the end one becomes a little numb to the situation,” nurse Adnan Bughadi, 22 from Shijaiya tells IPS. “Most of us have been working double shifts to cope with all the wounded, and it is very tiring. At one stage the floors were covered in blood and there was a shortage of beds for the wounded.”

“The hospital is running low on some essential medicines and has run out of others,” nurse Thabet tells IPS. “I find it very distressing seeing the number of children and other civilians killed but what can we do? We have to keep going.”

The PCHR has called for an international fact-finding mission “to investigate war crimes committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and to take necessary measures to prosecute the perpetrators.” (END)

Tourists from southern Sri Lanka walk past the gutted remains of the Jordanian cargo vessel Farah III, which was commandeered by the LTTE. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka, Nov 24 2012 (IPS)

The tour guide’s voice echoes around the dark, musty room, three stories underground. Fifty visitors – among them mothers holding infants, youths snapping pictures on mobile phones and grandparents leaning against the walls – are crammed into the narrow stairwell that leads down into the chamber, listening attentively to his every word.

The tourists have travelled hundreds of kilometres to see this underground bunker, once home to the most feared man in Sri Lanka: the leader of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Located a short drive south of the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu, a former LTTE operations hub in the northern Mullaitivu District, some 330 kilometres from the capital Colombo, the bunker complex is nestled deep within the jungle.

The massive compound boasts a firing range, a semi-underground garage, a jogging path, a film hall and a small funeral parlor where the Tiger leader paid his final respects to fallen cadres.

“This is out of this world, how did they ever build something like this?” a woman who gave her name as Ranjini asked while walking down the narrow stairs.

Other attractions on the tour of former rebel-held areas include the shipyard where the Tigers experimented with building submersibles, complete with a dry dock and the skeletal remains of the Farah III, a Jordanian cargo vessel that was commandeered by the LTTE.

What is sidelined, however, are details of the beleaguered Tamil population that lived in this region throughout 30 years of civil war, and is now struggling to survive.

Beneath war attractions, suffering continues

The Sri Lankan military came across the bunker complex after the Tigers were defeated in May 2009, signaling the end of a three-decade-long civil war in which the LTTE fought the Sri Lankan government for control over the north and east of the island in order to establish a separate state for the minority Tamil population.

Puthukkudiyiruppu and Mullaitivu, once the central command headquarters of a massive guerilla operation, now play host to thousands of visitors, mostly from the majority-Sinhalese southern regions of the country.

But while these guided tours offer locals a rare glance into the inner workings of the Tigers’ de facto state and the extent of its former military capacity, rights activists fear that many tourists are missing the “bigger picture” – the horrors of the aftermath of the war and the suffering that has become an everyday experience for tens of thousands who were displaced during the last bouts of fighting.

“I feel the (tourists) don’t have sense of what really happened here, or they don’t want to know,” Ruki Fernando, a rights activist who formerly headed the Human Rights in Conflict Programme at the national rights body, the Law and Society Trust, told IPS.

The facts surrounding the final stages of the war have been hotly contested in and outside the country: local rights groups, international humanitarian observers and aid workers claim at least 40,000 were killed, while the government insists that figure is closer to 7,000.

An internal review of the United Nations’ actions in Sri Lanka during the last phase of the war, released in early November, has reignited the furor over what happened here during the first half of 2009 and who was responsible.

The government has maintained a firm line that the Tamil civilians caught in the crossfire of the conclusive battle were “rescued” in a humanitarian operation and moved to safety in government “welfare camps”, while U.N. officials and aid workers classified this process as mass incarceration of Tamil civilian survivors in open-air detention centres, in violation of international law.

These unresolved questions are now being sidelined as the tourists arrive in droves, intent on one thing only – seeing as many of the war relics as possible, according to Saroja Sivachandaran, head of the Centre for Women and Development, a gender-based rights group in northern Jaffna.

“They fail to see that they are travelling through an area of absolute destruction where thousands still live in makeshift shelters,” she told IPS.

Some 450,000 displaced people, including around 236,000 who were rendered homeless during the last months of the war, are only now returning to their home villages in the north, even though basic amenities are still scarce in the region.

So far, just 21,000 permanent houses have been constructed for the roughly 170,000 still in search of homes.

The latest U.N. situation reports warn of serious funding shortfalls for rehabilitation work, a bleak forecast for the displaced.

Prashan de Visser, president of the national youth movement ‘Sri Lanka Unites’, told IPS that the gulf between visitors and those living in the former war zone stems from language barriers and a long history of cultural and social.

Sri Lanka Unites has engaged its island-wide base of 10,000 members to breach the ethnic divides, but there is still a long way to go since misconceptions are deeply “ingrained in the (social) system”, de Visser told IPS.

Sri Lanka Unites organises field tours and conferences for youth from all over the island, and for members of the vast Sri Lankan diaspora. Its main annual event, the Future Leaders’ Conference, was held in Jaffna this year, brining over 10,000 youth together for a week of activities.

During these intimate interactions, de Visser said, youth from different ethnic groups begin to see through the cultural and social barriers that have held them apart for so long.

This year, a group of youth leaders from the southern-most district of Hambantota pledged to raise 300,000 rupees (about 2,300 dollars) for work in the north after taking a field tour of the war-affected areas.

But most of the visitors flocking to the region are unlikely to make similar pledges.

Fernando warned that ‘gawking tourists’ will only reinforce ethnic divides instead of bridging them.

“This is still a massive curiosity park for the visitors, they really don’t want to see beyond the (thrills) offered by attractions like the bunker,” said Mahendran Sivakumar, a 61-year-old retired government education official who lived in the war zone throughout the entire conflict.

(END)

Stress and anguish are normal reactions among people who go through a natural disaster. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Nov 23 2012 (IPS)

“The city looked as if it had been bombed. On the way to my office, I passed people who had the same shocked look on their faces as I did. We would look at each other, and even though we were strangers, we’d ask ‘How did things go for you? Did anything happen to your house?’ It was a kind of warm solidarity that did me a lot of good.”

This is what a journalist in Santiago de Cuba told IPS, as she described at least one positive aspect of the collective reactions after a disaster like the one suffered by this eastern Cuban city on Oct. 25, when Hurricane Sandy, despite the weather alerts and government warnings, caught a large part of the population off guard.

The estimates of economic losses caused by the storm in eastern Cuba have not yet been published. But the damage was severe, and 11 people were killed.

But there is another, less-noticed, dimension: the psychological impact, which can be seen in people’s eyes when they talk about losing everything – their homes, their furniture, their household appliances, even their memories.

“I was really scared. I crawled into a cabinet when the wind tore the roof off my room. My neighbours pulled me out of the house and helped me cross the street to where other families whose homes were also damaged had taken shelter,” 70-year-old Isabel de la Cruz, from the city of Guantánamo, which was also hit hard, told IPS.

Depression, anxiety, despair, irritability and aggressiveness are all symptoms shown by people around the world who have gone through a natural disaster.

“Just think, we fell asleep with the beauty and woke up with the beast,” said a local resident who worked in a hotel that was totally destroyed by the storm.

“People are depressed and disoriented,” said Father Eugenio Castellanos, the Catholic priest at the shrine of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint. “I have noticed psychological imbalances because of the losses suffered, in more than a few people,” he told IPS.

The priest estimated that 90 percent of the homes in El Cobre, a village near Santiago de Cuba, felt Sandy’s impact.

Juan González Pérez told IPS that in the days after the hurricane, there were outbreaks of violence in some areas, especially when people stood in line to buy basic products that had been scarce.

“We had been without electricity for many days, and they started to sell kerosene for cooking,” said Pérez, a local spiritualist leader. “Although there was enough for everyone, there were arguments and fights in the line. When people get desperate, they tend to get aggressive.”

He said he told his followers “to come together, get along, share with people who don’t have enough, and not to give in to despair.”

In Mar Verde, a beach neighbourhood where Sandy made landfall 15 km from Santiago, Dr. Elizabeth Martínez has provided assistance to more than 100 people who are being housed in summer cabins that were not destroyed because they are set further back from the shore.

“The psychological impact is huge. But no one here was killed, and no one is sick,” she said.

After the hurricane hit, healthcare efforts were mainly focused on preventing epidemics from breaking out. “We are holding meetings on health in the neighbourhood, teaching people how to avoid transmissible diseases, and about the importance of purifying water before drinking it,” she said.

According to experts, between one-third and one-half of any population exposed to natural disasters suffers some kind of psychological problem, although in the majority of cases it would be considered a normal reaction in the face of extreme events.

But because of the impact of climate change, weather events like hurricanes threaten to increase in intensity.

“When I found my neighbours in the lower floors, we were in shock. But someone said: ‘We’re going to get into the entryway that is blocked by these fallen trees,’ and we started working, although at first no one was talking,” said one woman who works in the tourist industry. In the first few days after the storm, many people were on the streets removing rubble and cleaning up.

Due to the greater frequency and intensity of tropical storms, health authorities in Cuba began to focus in the 1990s on the psychological impact of hurricanes and other natural disasters. In 2008, when the country was hit by three hurricanes, the government ordered that more attention be given to the question by health authorities.

In an article on the issue, Dr. Alexis Lorenzo Ruiz explained that psychological and social aspects of disasters are taken into account, both in the training of personnel and in the organisation of health programmes that reach the entire country, with an emphasis on the most vulnerable sectors, such as children, adolescents and the elderly.

From a mental health point of view, in natural disasters, the entire population “suffers tension and anxiety to a greater or lesser degree, directly or indirectly,” Katia Villamil and Orlando Fleitas wrote, noting that the impact in such circumstances is more severe among low-income sectors.

The two professionals said the most frequent reactions ranged from “normal” ones, like manageable anxiety or mild depression, to emotional numbness, exacerbation of pre-existing psychiatric conditions or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hurricane Sandy caused damage not only in Santiago de Cuba but also in the eastern provinces of Guantánamo and Holguín. The government of Raúl Castro has not yet announced the amount of economic losses, although preliminary, partial figures released a few days after the storm mentioned an estimate of 88 million dollars.

Boniface Mwangi organised a group of graffiti artists to create controversial murals around Nairobi depicting the nation’s political elite as vultures and criticising the populace for voting them into office again and again. Credit: Mike Elkin/IPS

By Mike Elkin
NAIROBI, Nov 21 2012 (IPS)

A new website linking corruption and other scandals to high-ranking Kenyan politicians, created by a team of political provocateurs, has become one of the most-visited web pages in the country.

MaVulture.com, which means “many vultures” in Swahili, aims to collect, condense, and air the past wrongdoings of Kenya’s political class. Going live on Nov. 13, the site is the latest project from activist Boniface Mwangi, known for his political graffiti murals around Nairobi and his photographic exhibitions that documented the violent aftermath of the 2007 presidential elections.

Following a disputed election result in December 2007, riots and politically motivated tribal disputes broke out, leaving around 1,200 people dead and displacing 600,000.

Mwangi, 29, a freelance photographer, was twice awarded, in 2008 and 2010, CNN’s Mohamed Amin Photographic Award, named after a Kenyan photojournalist, for his work covering the post-election violence.

“Yo have y’all checked out mavulture.com?” tweeted Kenyan entertainment magazine Blink. “I think you need to check it out before you cast your vote next year.” Kenyans will be going to the polls to elect a new president in March 2013.

“Thanks for the info, mavulture.com,” tweeted a local twitter user called Msanifu. “I now know why/whom I should not vote for.”

The website so far features profiles on 17 politicians, including Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s first president, a current presidential candidate, and also one of the men under an International Criminal Court investigation for crimes against humanity during the 2007 post-election violence, which Kenyans refer to as “the Violence”.

Money laundering, land grabbing, drug trafficking and murder are just a few of the accusations Mavulture.com pins on its targets. Aside from articles, the site includes videos, infographics on each politician, and Wild-West-style wanted posters available for download. It is financed by anonymous donors.

Mwangi told IPS in an interview at his Nairobi office that the goal of the website was to educate Kenyans about the baggage their political leaders and candidates are carrying leading up to the presidential elections.

“We’re going to put online the records of every person involved in the government, every corruption case they’ve been in, and every accusation about them,” Mwangi said.

“So when you go to vote you’ll have this platform to have an informed perspective. We have grand-scale corruption in this country, and the same guys involved in the corruption have been for the past 49 years. So we can compare them and us. When they say, ‘we are together’, we will see that we are not together. Our kids don’t go to foreign schools, and we don’t have villas in the United Kingdom.”

Boniface Mwangi is known for his political graffiti murals around Nairobi and his photographic exhibitions that documented the violent aftermath of the 2007 presidential elections. Credit: Mike Elkin/IPS

According to Transparency International, the Berlin-based non-governmental organisation that documents global corruption, Kenya’s score in 2011 for perceived corruption was 2.2 out of 10, with 10 being clean. Overall, 153 out of 183 countries on the index ranked as less corrupt than Kenya. Transparency International estimated that corruption is costing Kenya up to 357 million dollars per year.

Mwangi said he moved into political activism out of frustration and anger after witnessing the post-election violence. In 2009 he founded Picha Mtaani, a traveling photo exhibition of the riots and killings, as a way to remind Kenyans of what happened.

Turning his gaze toward corruption, Mwangi then organised a group of graffiti artists to create controversial murals around Nairobi depicting the nation’s political elite as vultures and criticising the populace for voting them into office again and again.

In June, he led a rally that carried 49 black coffins to parliament while in session. Each coffin represented every year the politicians enjoyed impunity since independence in 1963. On them they stenciled, “Bury the vulture with your vote,” and each coffin was labeled with a political scandal.

Authorities painted over many of the graffiti murals in the Kenyan capital, but one of Mwangi’s most iconic images remains intact near the Nairobi city market. In it a man with a vulture head sits on a throne wearing a sly grin with a teacup in one hand and the other handcuffed to a briefcase. The thought cloud above him reads: “They loot, rape, burn and kill in my defence. I steal their taxes, grab land, but the idiots will still vote for me.”

“You know what a vulture does?” asked Nairobi taxi driver Kimani Jong Kimani Nganga as he looked at the mural. “It eats meat. We have had politicians since the elections that have been eating us. So we should change that.”

Mwangi said that he wants to provoke a response among Kenyans, because their apathy toward clear cases of political and financial abuse only emboldens those who seek to take advantage of the system.

“Recently, teachers and doctors were striking over low pay, and the members of parliament sat down and over 30 minutes awarded themselves a pay raise,” Mwangi said.

“There was no uproar. Two hundred people can do this in a country of 40 million people and no one goes to the streets. What do you call that? Zombies, cowards… It defeats logic how people can be slaves to a system and never speak out. People see injustice every day and they watch it happen.”

Fear of the consequences of speaking out, he said, is one of the main reasons for Kenyans’ silence. So Mwangi said he is thinking of planning a protest where everyone will wear masks.

“This country is very small, the majority of the companies are owned by politicians and vultures, so if some people protest they fear repercussions or being fired. With masks, people can show their true colours.”

*Additional reporting by Lucas Laursen

Somalia's first female Foreign Minister Fauzia Yusuf Haji Adan has a tough road ahead. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

By Abdurrahman Warsameh
MOGADISHU, Nov 20 2012 (IPS)

As little-known politician Fauzia Yusuf Haji Adan was sworn in as Somalia’s first female foreign minister and deputy prime minister on Monday Nov. 19, the stateswoman who hails from the unrecognised, self-proclaimed republic of Somaliland is tipped to become the country’s “Iron Lady”.

This is according to Adan´s political ally Mohamed Daahir Omar, who used to work closely with her in local Somaliland politics, in which he is currently active.

“We know Fauzia as a person with strong determination and as an approachable individual who likes to form consensus. But when she has to make a decision, she just goes for it and works to convince others of her way. She was mostly successful, and for that she can be considered Somalia’s Iron Lady,” Omar told IPS from Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, referring to Adan’s strong will.

Adan, who returned from her first state visit to neighbouring Djibouti on Nov. 18 and missed the official swearing-in ceremony of the cabinet on Nov. 15, takes on the mantle of leadership in a country with a number of tough foreign policy challenges.

While details of Adan and her background are sketchy, and she has been reluctant to grant interviews to the press, Omar said that because of her skill as a consensus-builder, the new foreign minister could play a role in bridging the divide between this Horn of Africa nation and Somaliland.

One of her first tasks will be to advance tentative and delicate talks between the Somali government and politicians in the northern state. Somaliland unilaterally declared independence from the rest of Somalia following the collapse of the country’s government in 1991.

“The talks between Somalia and Somaliland will be an acid test for Adan because as a northerner she will have to show her people that she does not want to force them into a union (with Somalia) that they don’t want.

“But at the same time as a key minister in the federal government she has to represent the views of the government – the sanctity of national unity and sovereignty,” Garaad Jama, an analyst from the Centre for Policy Development, a think tank in Somalia, told IPS.

Adan, who is only one of two women in the 10-member cabinet appointed by Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon, will also have to deal with the growing friction between Kenya and Somalia over the formation of local administration areas in southern Somalia.

The Kenyan military captured the Al-Shabaab-controlled southern Somali port city of Kismayo in late September. The port was one of the key strongholds of the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist radical group.

But Kenya has reportedly been pushing for the region in southern Somalia known as Azania or Jubaland – where Kismayo is the main city – to be given the status of an autonomous state, to serve as a buffer zone between Kenya and the chaos in Somalia.

The Somali government has repeatedly voiced its opposition to the creation of such a state, which it fears would become a Kenyan satellite rather than a local administration that would fall under its control.

Although Kenya vehemently denied the charges, its soldiers in control of Kismayo’s airport prevented a Somali government delegation from entering the city on Nov. 7, after a local militia leader objected to their arrival.

“The signs are already not good, with deteriorating relations between Kenya and the new Somali government and other tough and pressing challenges,” Maryan Muumin, a women’s rights activist from the Somalia National Women’s Organisation (SNWO) in Mogadishu, told IPS.

“It seems that the daunting task for the new foreign minister is clear cut and it’s for Adan to deal with the challenges facing her, not only as Somalia’s foreign minister, but as the first woman to hold that post,” she said.

Adan will also have to deal with Al-Shabaab, which still poses a threat to the government in many parts of southern and central Somalia.

Al-Shabaab, which is opposed to women taking up roles outside the home and has imposed strict Sharia law in parts of the country that it controls, has threatened to target Somalia’s United Nations-backed government leaders. The militant group led a failed attempt to assassinate the country’s new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Sep. 12, his second day in office.

“Although Al-Shabaab is now on the back foot, the group is the greatest threat to any government in Somalia,” Jama said “How this new government deals with the militant group, which has assassinated several ministers and other top government officials, will be a major test for the ministers, including the first female foreign minister.”

Adan described her appointment as a precedent that will open doors for Somali women.

“This is a historic day not only for Somali women but for all Somalia,” Adan said after the announcement of her appointment on Nov. 4.

Haliam Elmi from SNWO told IPS that Adan’s appointment was “a gift not only for Somali women but also for Africa and the world at large because women’s situations are similar in many parts of the world.”

She said she hoped that it would result in the acceptance of women’s participation in politics in this conservative Muslim country.

“This is a step in the right direction and we hope that society will finally accept women’s ascent on the political ladder,” she told IPS.

But Adan will have a tough road ahead of her. Not everyone has welcomed her appointment. Somalia’s Islamic clergy, for example, said that Adan’s appointment was against the teachings of Islam.

“In Muslim society women are given the highest role a human being can take, which is rearing children and being head of a Muslim home. What we hear from the government is in contradiction to our way of life as a Muslim society, and nothing but calamity will come from giving such political leadership roles to Fauzia, not only for her, but for her family and society in general,” said Sheikh Ali Mohamoud, a Muslim cleric in Mogadishu.

Border guards in Bangladesh are refusing entry to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Credit: Anurup Titu/IPS

By Naimul Haq
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Nov 20 2012 (IPS)

In late August, Mohammad Saifuddin (not his real name), together with his wife, three daughters and son, fled the carnage of communal violence in western Myanmar’s Rakhine province and headed for the border of neighbouring Bangladesh.

Horrified by attacks on the minority Rohingya Muslims by the majority Buddhist community this past summer, the Saifuddin family embarked on what they described as a “horrific” five-day-long journey to reach the nearest border town of Teknaf in the Cox’s Bazar district of southeast Bangladesh, some 200 kilometres away.

Six other families accompanied the Saifuddins on a perilous journey that involved crossing the Mayu River and meandering across hilly forests.

“We moved during the night to evade detection. The journey seemed endless with the children unable to continue walking. At times we had no food or water, and were sometimes completely lost,” Ejaz Ahmed, who brought his wife and family across the border, told IPS.

But instead of arriving on safe soil, as they had hoped, the refugees have met strict border control and a hostile local government, highlighting the precariousness of life for this stateless Muslim population in Southeast Asia.

No rest for refugees

Refugees embark on long, perilous journeys by land and sea, only to be turned away. Credit: Anurup Titu/IPS

Sparked by reports in late May that three Rohingya Muslim men had allegedly raped a Buddhist Rakhine woman, the violence left thousands of families from the farming and fishing villages of Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Kyauktaw, Rathedaung, Minbya and Mrauk U homeless, with no access to food, water, medical supplies or shelter.

Within a month 83,000 out of a population of about 800,000 Rohingyas had fled their ancestral homes in Rakhine. By June, 95 people had been killed.

Some of the survivors now living around the camps in Bangladesh told IPS they had no choice but to flee.

“I saw my neighbours being dragged out of their homes and beaten to death. We fled to escape being killed,” Rehana Begum told IPS.

Mujibor Rahman, a vegetable shop owner in Kyauktaw village, said “On a dark night in June a dozen men attacked our local market where they picked up young Muslim men and (stabbed them) with rapiers. Many died on the spot while others were left moaning on the ground.”

But stories of these “genocide-like” conditions have failed to sway the Bangladeshi government, which has tightened border security at all points of entry.

Authorities have given Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) strict instructions to deny entry to any “intruder” from Myanmar, whether travelling by boat or on foot.

As a result, scores of Rohingyas are said to be languishing on the other side of the roughly 270-kilometre land border in makeshift camps.

BGB Commander for Cox’s Bazaar, lieutenant colonel Mohammad Khalequzzaman, told IPS that since August over 1,300 Rohingyas were sent back through the Tumbru and Ghundum border points.

In total, some 2,600 Rohingyas have been sent back since the first wave of refugees arrived about four months ago. The Home Ministry in Dhaka estimates that number could rise to nearly 10,000 by early next year.

“We have intensified our patrols around the Naf River”, which forms one of the borders between the two countries, Coast Guard Station Officer Commander Badrudduza told IPS.

Armed BGB members and coast guards in speedboats are patrolling the Naf, searching for refugees. But the vast Bay of Bengal, which lies to the south of Bangladesh and southwest of Myanmar, still facilitates several points of entry for those who arrive in dilapidated wooden boats, mostly at night.

“It’s very dangerous to take such a coastal route. Coast guard troops from both countries often shoot at us,” Mohammad Kalam Hossain, who recently arrived in Teknaf with a group of 26 men, women and children from Ponnagyun, a coastal fishing village in south Rakhine, told IPS.

“In the last two weeks more people fled, fearing fresh attacks. The only safe place for us is Bangladesh,” Mohammad Jahangir Alam, a fisherman from Myebon village, told IPS.

Those who do manage to enter Bangladesh are in perpetual fear of being caught by the intelligence or being reported to the police.

Since they speak the local dialect and bear a strong resemblance to Bangladeshi people, many refugees are able to slip into village and town life undetected.

But once caught, refugees receive “no mercy”. “The authorities will force you to disclose the whereabouts of others, and send (everyone) back. That’s why we try to avoid exposure during the daytime,” Julekha Banu, who escaped to Bangladesh in September, told IPS.

Legal quagmire

Though the issue is only now receiving front-page coverage in international media, the plight of Rohingya Muslims dates back several decades, ever since the ruling military junta in Myanmar stripped them of their citizenship.

During a 1978 military assault known as the King Dragon Operation, 200,000 Rohingyas were driven from Rakhine State to Bangladesh, where they lived in squalid refugee camps for decades.

A similar purge in 1991-92 sent another 250,000 Myanmar nationals of Rohingya ethnicity streaming across the border.

Though Burmese officials at the time identified those refugees as their own citizens, political leader Aung San Suu Kyi is now referring to the refugees as “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh”, a fact the Foreign Ministry here has vehemently denied.

A Foreign Ministry spokesperson in Dhaka, speaking under condition of anonymity, told IPS that Bangladesh is already stretched to its limit, with two refugee camps, Ukhiya and Kutupalong, housing over 30,000 displaced Rohingyas. An additional 200,000 Rohingyas are estimated to be living in Bangladesh as undocumented immigrants.

This legal quagmire has effectively rendered the Rohingya people ‘stateless’, with limited access to employment, education, healthcare and public services in either country.

Speaking to IPS on the phone from Geneva, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, said, “The situation… is very critical. I am concerned about the Rohingyas who have no homes, food, water or medical care… They require immediate humanitarian aid.”

He added, “Bangladesh should fulfill its obligations under international law by respecting and protecting the human rights of all people within (its) borders, regardless of whether they are recognised as citizens.”

In August Quintana was refused entry into Bangladesh to see the situation here.

Meanwhile, refugees continue to live in limbo, unsure whether they will be allowed to stay or forced to return to a nightmare, which took place “under the nose of the Yangon regime”, according to survivors.

“This is our new home,” a refugee woman in Cox’s Bazar told IPS. “Please let us stay here.”

(END)

A Syrian child in a makeshift school at the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. Credit: Robert Stefanicki/IPS.

By Robert Stefanicki
ZA’ATARI REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan, Nov 19 2012 (IPS)

No other camp for Syrians match the size of Za’atari. Equal rows of tents marked with the UNHCR logo spread to the horizon, dotted with lanterns and water tanks. Only a handful of people remain in sight, mostly on their way to or from the bathrooms.

Peace and quiet in a camp of 26,000 war refugees is surprising, even more in light of recent media reports of protests against unbearable living conditions.

Some more movement can be found on the main street, lined with food and clothes stalls. Water tankers and bulldozers pass by the walkers. “This is our entertainment. Walking back and forth. Or lying in the shade,” one of the passers-by says.

Za’atari was opened in late July to shelter the massive influx of Syrian refugees fleeing the violence in their country. The camp is in the north of Jordan, 15 km south of the Syrian border. It is set up on barren desert land where the common sandstorms cover everything in dust. Initially there was no shade, no medical assistance and very little water.

At the end of September complaints erupted into unrest. According to reports, angry refugees demolished a field hospital and one of the offices, provoking Jordanian security forces to disperse them with tear gas.

Since then about 5,000 refugees left the camp for Syria.

IPS asked around whether the exodus continues. True, some people are leaving. Because of the conditions? “No. To fight against the regime,” said a 28-year-old from Dara, who said his name was Ahmed. “Others leave only for a while to see what happened to their homes. Whatever the conditions are in the camp, they are still better than those in Syria.”

Ahmed rolls up his trouser-leg and shows marks from burning cigarettes. And a torn certificate that he had spent six months in prison.

“I came to the camp in August, crossing the border at night, after the fighting died down,” he said. Jordanian soldiers took him to the assembly point for refugees, from where he was transported to Za’atari.

The situation in the camp is changing for the better. All the humanitarian agencies – among them UNHCR (United Nations Refugee Agency), UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), Save the Children, World Food Programme (WFP), Islamic Relief and the Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organisation – are working to improve conditions.

Different methods of feeding refugees are being tested. Because the Syrians kept complaining that food was not to their taste, distribution of hot meals has been abandoned. Now, every family gets a basket of staple products: canned beans, tuna, hummus, rice, oil, salt, sugar.

Outside the food distribution centre IPS spoke with 40-year-old Baha (nickname) waiting for a car to take him back to his tent. He pointed to two cardboard boxes filled with food: “Look, is this enough for two weeks for me, my wife and two children?”

His colleague, 36-year-old Mohammed, lifted a can of tuna with apparent disgust and said that fish is bad. “They give us the cheapest stuff.”

WFP which is responsible for feeding the refugees, says that the quality of food in Za’atari meets standards, and that the minimum of 2,100 kcal per person per day is exceeded by 300 kcal.

After giving up on hot meals, communal kitchens have been raised. Now refugees can cook for themselves but not everybody is happy.

“Beans and rice every day,” grumbled one of the women cooking in the kitchen. “Bread is not enough: we get three pita a day, but I used to eat four only for breakfast.”

The woman named Um Hassan has a more serious problem: “My husband is a diabetic. He cannot eat what is given here. I reported it, but to no avail.”

More changes are on way. “Instead of rations, the refugees will receive coupons to stores that will soon be opened in the camp,” Jonathan Campbell of WFP said. “They will be able to buy whatever they want.”

The hardest struggle is against the dust. The land for construction of the camp was razed, which breached its structure. Despite gravel and asphalt being laid, even a slight gust of wind rises up whirls.

In all 57 percent of Za’atari residents are children. Nearly 3,000 students are registered at school at the camp. Lessons are held in two shifts, with girls attending in the morning and boys in the afternoon. Also, UNICEF operates 20 Child Friendly Spaces – brightly painted tents where kids can play, socialise and try to overcome war trauma.

The approaching winter is a serious challenge. Winters in Jordan are surprisingly cold, especially in the northern areas, where temperatures drop below zero at night. Between November and March rain, strong winds and storms are common, as well as occasional snowfall.

“We have no blankets. Only a few are lucky to live in caravans. We are going to freeze,” said a resident at the camp. But the resident of a caravan is not happy either: “It is hot and stuffy, I sleep outside.”

“Transfer to the camp is a shock,” says Heinke Veit, regional information officer for the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO). “Everything is different from home. Libyan refugees in Tunisia were shocked at the lack of air conditioning, widely provided by Gaddafi. Their Tunisian hosts were also shocked – at such exorbitant demands.”

By mid-December 600 more caravans are expected, enough for 2,500 refugees. This means most of the Za’atari residents will spend this winter in tents. Humanitarian agencies are preparing warm clothes, thermal blankets, heated and insulated communal spaces and hot water supply.

More than a million people have been displaced by violence within Syria. In the worst case scenario the refugee population at Za’atari is going to swell threefold by the end of March – unless the war ends, a hope that keeps spirits up.

Children in Araçuaí, Minas Gerais, in eastern Brazil. Credit: Rodrigo Dai – Courtesy of Ser Criança

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 14 2012 (IPS)

If a black woman and a white woman both need emergency obstetric care, a Brazilian doctor will assist the white woman because of the stereotype that black women are better at handling pain and are used to giving birth.

Because of cultural and social conventions in Brazil “blacks are seen in terms of stereotypes, and that leads to them not having the same guarantees in healthcare treatment as whites have,” Crisfanny Souza Soares, a psychologist with the National Network for Social Monitoring and Health of the Black Population, told IPS.

A campaign in Brazil is seeking to combat these stereotypes, which reflect racism that undermines public health, in the country’s hospital system.

The Pro Health National Mobilisation of the Black Population was launched this year by Afro-Brazilian organisations with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The aim of the campaign, whose theme is “Long, healthy life free of racism”, is comprehensive healthcare at all stages of life. It encourages society, and especially the health system, to fight discrimination, in order to bring down the high mortality rates among the country’s black population.

“Practically all health indicators for black women are worse than for white women,” said Souza Soares. “In breast cancer screenings, doctors spend less time checking the breasts of black women, and black women receive less anaesthesia when they give birth.”

Half of Brazil’s 192 million people define themselves as “black” in the census.

The Health Ministry, which has been implementing an integral national policy targeting the black population in the Unified Health System (SUS) since 2006, has carried out studies to detect stereotypes and racism.

“The idea that blacks are better at handling pain and at living with illnesses is prevalent throughout the health system, from nursing assistants to doctors,” said Deise Queiroz, coordinator of the Articulação Política de Juventudes Negras, an organisation focused on youth policies in the northeastern state of Bahia.

Queiroz has experienced that in person, especially when she goes to the doctor with her mother, a diabetic with high blood pressure who is frequently in need of assistance from the public health system.

The activist told IPS that the SUS, a model in terms of democratising healthcare, has failed to meet the high level of demand, “and racist attitudes have become more overt.”

The Brazilian constitution says healthcare is a universal right, and it is the duty of the state to guarantee its provision. And the SUS establishes that everyone has the right to quality, humane treatment free of discrimination.

But racism persists, both obvious and subtle. “It is reflected in the living conditions of people and in the way health services are organised and policies are formulated,” Fernanda Lopes, a UNFPA representative in Brazil, told IPS.

“That is why specific policies aimed at achieving equality must be crafted,” she said.

An epidemiological study by the Health Ministry provided concrete information to help design policies, such as indicators like prenatal care, types of births, low birthweight, and maternal-child morbid-mortality rates broken down by race, skin colour and ethnicity.

It also analyses other aspects, such as the right to and access to family planning, which are much more precarious among black women.

This aspect is a central focus of the UNFPA State of World Population 2012 report released Wednesday Nov. 14, entitled, “By Choice, Not by Chance: Family Planning, Human Rights and Development”.

For example, among whites in Brazil, girls between the ages of 15 and 19 accounted for 19 percent of live births, but among blacks, girls in that age group accounted for 29 percent of births.

And while 62 percent of the mothers of white babies reported that they had at least seven prenatal checkups, only 37 percent of the mothers of newborn black or mixed-race babies had gone in for that number of prenatal visits.

There are also differences in child mortality rates. The risk of a black or mixed-race child dying before reaching the age of five as a result of infectious or parasitic diseases is 60 percent higher than the risk faced by a white child. And the risk of dying of malnutrition is 90 percent higher.

The study also found that more black women die of pregnancy-related complications like hypertension.

“They say the worse health indicators among the black population are because most black people are poor, which makes them more vulnerable, said Souza Soares. But other variables, which are simply reflections of racism, cannot be denied, she argued.

“If we see two young men in a hospital, both of whom were shot, it’s more likely that the white youth will be seen as a victim, while it will be assumed that the young black man is there because he was involved in a crime,” she says.

And sometimes this reflection of the “cultural imaginary…determines how a health professional establishes priorities of who gets medical attention first.”

Another concern involves the diseases prevalent in the black population, such as sickle-cell anaemia, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension, for which the health system does not have specific policies.

Black women are 50 percent more likely than whites to develop type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure is two times more prevalent among black women than among the general population.

And in the case of sickle-cell anaemia, which could be detected in newborns, some 3,500 Brazilian children are born with the disease every year, making it the most common genetic disorder in Brazil, according to the Pro Health National Mobilisation of the Black Population.

“The black population generally dies at a younger age, and deaths due to avoidable causes are more frequent,” Lopes said.

The policy aimed at combating discrimination in healthcare “should minimise the impact of longstanding inequalities by means of affirmative action strategies,” she said.

UNFPA is working with the government and the black movement to strengthen the policy and the training of professionals needed to implement it.

“The challenge is to answer the question why in a country where blacks represent 50 percent of the population, we have such different health situations,” the Health Ministry admitted.

Sandy viewed from space on Oct. 29 at 16:55 GMT, 40 km from Atlantic City with winds of 144 km an hour. Credit: NASA – Public domain

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 5 2012 (IPS)

Hi, this is Sandy. By the time you read this, I’ll be gone, after dissipating into increasingly weaker remnants of strong winds, heavy rains and snowfall in the Great Lakes region of North America.**

I am saddened by the damage and loss of life but am truly surprised you are so shocked by the extent and severity. I was born on Oct. 22, and over the course of 10 days I killed more than 150 people and caused tens of billions of dollars in damages in numerous countries in the Caribbean and on the east coast of the United States.

Haven’t you noticed hurricanes, cyclones and other storms have become more powerful in recent years? And that extreme weather events like record flooding, droughts and heat waves are happening more frequently?

In 2012 extreme weather records were broken all over the U.S. In 2011 there were 14 separate billion-dollar-plus weather disasters in the U.S. including flooding, hurricanes and tornados.

Did you notice my relatives? They’ve been all over the planet. In the past 20 years extreme events have had major impacts on developing countries like Bangladesh, Burma and Honduras that have suffered most in terms of damages and lives lost.

Last year, we displaced 38 million people with climate-related disasters such as the flooding in Pakistan and China.

And all this is happening in part because the air and sea have become warmer over the past 50 years.

The world has already warmed 0.8 C since the pre-Industrial era and will rise at least 1.6 C even if emissions of the hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning coal, oil and natural gas ended today. (There is a time lag in the climate system. The current global warming is the result of CO2 emissions from the 1950s to 1970s.)

You should bear that reality in mind. There is twice as much warming to come, guaranteed. I’m sorry to say it may be too late to do enough to prevent a threefold or even fourfold increase in the current warming.

You can dial down the thermostat if you really want to.

You should also know there are more superstorms or “Frankenstorms” (more properly anthrostorms, since we are caused by human activity) like me coming. Not today or next week, but in the near future.

The climate is now supercharged with extra heat energy. I’ve called it like being on steroids. The climate is 0.8 C warmer. That’s the average increase over the entire planet. Many places are much warmer, such as the Arctic where it is two to three degrees warmer on average now.

Canada is 1.3 C warmer today than 50 years ago. It will be four degrees warmer in a few decades. Temperatures in the U.S. will not be far behind.

In a few decades the entire planet will be two to three degrees warmer. That might not sound like much, but it means a 200 to 300 percent increase over today.

Storms and extreme weather are powered by heat energy. I don’t want to think what will be coming.

But it doesn’t have to go that way. Believe it or not, the reality is that humanity is in control of the global thermostat.

The increase in temperatures in the air and oceans is mainly due to emissions of CO2. Those emissions of CO2 come from burning coal, oil, and gas and cutting down most of the world’s forests (trees take CO2 from the air to grow).

The U.S. could shift from energy sources emitting CO2 to 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2030, as studies published in Scientific American have shown.

So don’t curse me; you’ve made me stronger with fossil fuels.

There are estimates that I caused 50 billion dollars in damages in the U.S., in addition to the several billion in damages in the Caribbean countries.

That’s a lot of money – enough to give every human on the planet around eight dollars. But it is only a fraction of the 600 billion dollars that the oil and gas industry is spending this year alone in exploration and new production, according the Harvard University research study, “Oil: The Next Revolution”.

This 600 billion dollars invested in fossil fuels will bring extreme weather no human has ever witnessed. And it will be an “investment” in extreme weather lasting more than a hundred years.

So don’t curse me if your home is flooded, your life disrupted or worse, if you’ve lost a loved one. Hurricanes and tropical storms are nature’s pressure relief valves. It’s not our fault we’ve been amped up on fossil-fuel “steroids” you’ve put into the atmosphere.

Every day, millions more tons of CO2 are added, trapping ever more of the sun’s heat.

A ton of CO2 is about three barrels of oil (159 liters each). And every ton of CO2 “lives” in the atmosphere for 100 years. That means every barrel of oil, ton of coal or cubic foot of gas burned adds more CO2, trapping more and more of the sun’s heat for the next 100 years.

It’s curious you’d spend 600 billion dollars on additional sources of fossil fuel when there is already more than enough production capacity to push CO2 levels from current the 390 parts per million (ppm) to far above 450 ppm.

It’s a curious investment when your experts and leaders say they want to return to a safer level of 350 ppm. Think about that when you forget about me.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

**Hurricane Sandy Speaks – Stephen Leahy´s blog

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Tahrir Square, the cradle of Egypt's revoltution, has become also a place for harassment of women. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.

By Mel Frykberg
CAIRO, Nov 1 2012 (IPS)

Egyptian bullies who sexually harass women in the streets, often taking advantage of mob situations and the anonymity these provide, are getting a taste of their own medicine – and they don’t like it.

Due to the plague of sexual harassment, which the Egyptian authorities have appeared unwilling to address hitherto, Egyptian women have been taking matters into their own hands by organising anti-sexual harassment campaigns. And their efforts are being supported by the growing number of young Egyptian men who have formed anti-harassment squads.

A young Egyptian man, dressed in faded blue jeans, his hair fashionably slicked with gel into a spike hairdo, is suddenly surrounded by a group of Egyptian men dressed in fluorescent green jackets emblazoned with anti-sexual harassment logos.

Several of the anti-harassment squad put the startled young man into a headlock. He is then lightly slapped on both sides of his face which leave huge black grease marks making him stand out from the crowd. After a verbal dressing-down for his sexual misconduct his particulars are recorded and he is then released, as a crowd of curious onlookers gather around the highly embarrassed youth.

This is just one of many cases that have been documented and videoed recently in downtown Cairo. Some of the detained men were already marked with mercurochrome which was sprayed at them by young women carrying water pistols filled with the liquid as well as tear gas.

On Sunday Egyptian police and the minister of the interior reported arresting 172 men on charges of sexual harassment and assault during the first two days of Eid Al Adha, one of Islam’s holiest holidays which began on Friday. The majority of arrests took place in Cairo but arrests were also made in other parts of the country.

The arrests followed a statement by Cairo’s Security Directorate on Saturday that it had recorded 87 verbal harassment cases and six physical harassment cases on Friday. While sexual harassment is a daily occurrence in Egypt during holidays there is a sharp increase in the assaults.

Activists behind an initiative called “I witnessed harassment” reported last week that more than 60 percent of women who were in downtown Cairo on Friday were subjected to sexual harassment.

Hotlines were established for women to phone, and groups from the anti-sexual harassment squads patrolled hotspots in downtown Cairo. The activists reported several cases of mobs of men targeting women. In one incident a group of 40 men attacked 50 girls.

Sexual intimidation has long been a problem in Egypt. According to a survey issued in 2008 by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights, 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 per cent of foreign women had been exposed to sexual harassment at least once.

Conservative Muslim women covering their hair have been targeted as have women dressed in the niqab which covers their entire body, leaving only their eyes visible.

Members of the “Catch a Harasser” movement and members of the Egyptian Democratic Institute in Baharia held a silent protest last week in the nothern Delta city Damanhour, against sexual harassment in anticipation of the forthcoming holiday.

They held placards reading, “If you dislike my clothes or my walk, is that an excuse to molest me? If that was so, why do you still harass me when I’m veiled or fully veiled?”

During the Egyptian revolution, and subsequent protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, groups of men were also seen attacking female protestors, taking advantage of the lack of a police presence and the anonymity of the crowd.

Activists reported to the media that some of these attacks were deliberately organised by members of the former regime of Hosni Mubarak to intimidate female activists. Other mobs of sexual predators, however, appeared to have been acting spontaneously.

A number of foreign female journalists have been attacked in Tahrir. The infamous attack on CBS’s South African correspondent Lara Logan made international headlines when she was reporting from Tahrir during the revolution.

The latest attack took place against Sonia Dridi, a correspondent for France 24, when she was surrounded by a gang of young males as she reported from the Egyptian capital recently.

After being groped for several minutes she was eventually rescued by a fellow reporter who dragged her to safety.

Despite its reluctance to take action the growing number of attacks has forced the government’s hand. Last Monday Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Qandil said that his government was preparing a draft law which would impose harsher penalties against perpetrators of sexual harassment.

His statement came after the National Women’s Council started a national campaign “Patrols Against Sexual Harassment,” in August 2012 to combat sexual harassment in Cairo.

Furthermore, officials announced last week they were planning to create a network of surveillance cameras along the main streets and squares of Cairo to clamp down on sexual harassment in the city. They added that the faces of perpetrators would be broadcast on TV and shown on the Internet.

However, activists have complained about police failing to take action even when given the details of the perpetrators saying that often the authorities questioned the identity of the attackers without taking any legal actions against the harassers.

Palestinian children join in to make use of limited time given by the Israelis for gathering olives in Deir Istiya village in the occupied West Bank. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
SALEM, Occupied West Bank, Oct 29 2012 (IPS)

Affixed to a large cement bloc, the rusted, grey gate leading Palestinian farmers from the northern West Bank village of Salem to their olive groves was opened for four days this year.

“The road is closed by this gate and it’s (always) closed except for two times in the year,” says Adley Shteyeh, a member of the Salem local committee.

Salem residents own approximately 10,000 dunams of land on the eastern side of their village. The area can only be accessed with a permit issued by the Israeli military authorities and after crossing the gate and an Israeli settlement bypass road.

“Usually we need ten days or more to do our work on the other side (of the bypass road),” Shteyeh said. Over his shoulder, a handful of villagers could be seen cutting branches off their trees, to make sure they get all the olives before their permits run out.

Last week, two Palestinian farmers from Salem attempted to cross the bypass road in a tractor to access the olive trees. Before they could manage to do so, an Israeli military jeep blocked their passage. Moments later, IPS witnessed two more army jeeps arrive on the scene.

Then, about a dozen Israeli soldiers held a group of Palestinian and international supporters, who were on a tour of the village, and local Palestinian residents, on the suspicion that Palestinian youth from the village threw stones at nearby Israeli settlers.

After over half an hour, the group was finally let go, and the farmers were given access to their olive groves.

“If someone tries to cross this road without coordination, he is either beaten or harassed by settlers or the Israeli army,” Shteyeh says. “Settlers have come in and vandalised land, and beat up people inside the village also.”

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories (UN-OCHA), there are 73 barrier gates in the West Bank. Closed year round, the Israeli authorities only open them for limited amounts of time during the olive harvest.

Since the start of October this year, UN-OCHA estimates that Israeli settlers have vandalised or destroyed approximately 1,000 olive trees belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank.

This destruction has negatively impacted the economic viability of the olive oil industry in the occupied Palestinian territories, which accounts for 14 percent of the agricultural income in the area, and supports approximately 80,000 Palestinian families.

“Any losses relating to settler violence, or the ongoing restrictions on access for farmers to their olive groves throughout the year, has an impact on the local economy,” Ramesh Rajasingham, head of UN-OCHA, tells IPS via e-mail.

“The sad thing here is that, in many of these cases, a family that could previously support itself has had its livelihood pulled from under them and therefore suddenly find themselves reliant on support from humanitarian organisations and donors; this reliance on aid, in turn, further contributes to the crisis of dignity. This situation is entirely avoidable.”

But harvesting olives is more than just a means of sustenance for many Palestinians.

“Our lives are bound to the olive trees,” farmer Jamal Abu Hijji tells IPS. A 48-year-old father of four, Abu Hijji spent a sunny October afternoon last week with his two brothers, their wives, and their children in his olive tree grove in the Nablus-area village of Deir Istiya.

Together, using ladders and small plastic rakes, they combed through each branch and knocked olives onto plastic tarps set up below the trees.

Abu Hijji explains that during the olive harvest season, he works from 6 am to 4 pm each day for about one month, to cultivate almost 300 trees. But, in addition to harvesting, he must work at a local olive press to meet his family’s needs.

“The outcome is modest to make a living, but it is important for us as we have lived here and inherited the lands and the trees from our fathers and grandfathers,” he said. “Its significance is not for a great materialistic value; it is more because of the moral value, the traditions and the land. I am Palestinian and I want to protect my land.” (END)

Uganda conservationists are concerned that increasing numbers of people have begun eating primate meat. Credit: Samson Baranga/IPS

By Henry Wasswa
ALBERTINE RIFT REGION, Uganda, Oct 25 2012 (IPS)

Conservationists struggling to protect the remaining population of Ugandan chimpanzees have raised concerns that people around wildlife reserves in the west of the country have taken to eating the primates.

“There is now an issue of eating bush meat. We did not think Ugandans were eating primate meat but we are starting to observe that monkeys and chimps are being eaten. This is scary. The threat to their survival has been growing bigger,” according to Lily Ajarova who runs the Ngamba Chimpanzee Sanctuary, located on an island of the same name in Lake Victoria in the Albertine Rift region.

The sanctuary, which houses 48 primates rescued from human captivity, was set up with the help of the Jane Goodall Institute and is managed by the Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Decades ago, tens of thousands of chimpanzees roamed the thick tropical forests that then covered a vast tract of land in Uganda’s Albertine Rift region. The area covers the western arm of the Great East African Rift Valley from north-western Uganda to the extreme southwest, along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

But according to the World Wildlife Fund, chimpanzees have already disappeared from four African countries, and are nearing extinction in many others largely due to deforestation and the hunting of the primates for bushmeat. Currently there are only an estimated 5,000 chimpanzees in Uganda, conservation officials say.

Most of the remaining chimpanzees in this country are protected in six main game and forest reserves in the Albertine Rift region, while others are trapped in forests owned by individuals.

Ajarova told IPS that although her team of conservationists had first noticed people eating primate meat in western Uganda two years ago, those engaging in the practice had mostly been immigrants or refugees from neighbouring DRC. It was rare for locals in this East African nation to eat primate meat, she said.

“There are many other parts of the world where primate meat is eaten but this had not been happening in Uganda. We began witnessing this over time. It has been developing slowly and we ourselves only got wind of it when we were in the field two years ago,” she said, adding that it was now “an emerging problem.”

The recent arrivals of immigrants from the DRC have created a shift in the population balance of the area and have had an effect on local culture, she said. In July the Minister for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees Musa Ecweru said that Uganda was struggling to feed the large number of Congolese fleeing the fighting in North Kivu Province in neighbouring DRC. There are an estimated 16,000 Congolese refugees in western Uganda.

“There are lots of Congolese refugees in the area and they may have influenced the local people to eat monkeys and chimpanzees,” Ajarova said. “This has not been a part of Ugandan culture in the past, but now it is becoming an issue. We have found that the habit is now rife in the whole (western) region. It is rampant in almost all the villages we visit.

“We have from time to time seen villagers carrying carcasses of monkeys and, on occasion, chimps,” Ajarova said.

Officials also believe that people have taken to eating primates because the Albertine Rift region is poverty-stricken and people mostly depend on forest resources for survival, as they cannot afford to purchase meat.

“People are desperate, they are poor as this is an underdeveloped region. They mostly depend on forest resources, including game meat, and this may have forced them to resort to eating primate meat,” Ajarova said.

Experts are now worried that the new trend could lead to a possible outbreak of Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever that is often fatal, which is believed to be transferred to humans through contact with an infected animal.

“This is a serious problem. Any meat that is eaten has to pass through proper veterinary inspection, even if it is from farms. People eating primate meat run a risk of getting infected with zoonotic diseases, including Ebola,” said Andrew Seguya, the executive director of the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

“There is no Ugandan tribe that traditionally eats primate meat, but there are many Congolese refugees in that area and the Congolese may have spread the habit to locals,” he said.

“Ebola is spread through direct contact and it’s thought that these primates are carriers of the disease and may transmit it to humans through other ways, including faecal matter. There is even a school of thought that AIDS might have been transmitted from primates,” Seguya, a veterinary surgeon, told IPS.

The western district of Kibaale, in the Albertine Rift region, was hit by a suspected Ebola epidemic in July. Health officials are yet to confirm that it was an Ebola outbreak. But according to media reports 17 people died.

Meanwhile, Ajarova said efforts are being made to change people’s attitudes towards eating primate meat through education programmes and the setting up of animal-rearing projects among villagers.

“We are telling people to stop eating primate meat, informing them that it is dangerous to their health as they will get diseases like Ebola. This is one of the key messages in our education programmes,” she said.

“We also use FM radios to pass on conservation messages to the communities. These reach out to large numbers of people at one go,” Ajarova said.

Seventy percent of France’s 20,000 sex workers are migrant women. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Oct 24 2012 (IPS)

When French police broke up a Nigerian human trafficking ring that allegedly forced young migrant women into prostitution, the arrests cast a sharp light on the plight of what the authorities called “modern-day slaves”, here and throughout Europe.

Following the operation last month, police said that the criminal ring had trafficked young Nigerian women into France via Italy, and that the women were forced into prostitution to pay off thousands of euros in so-called debts to those who had arranged their smuggling.

These young women form part of the estimated 1.5 million victims of human trafficking in the European Union and other developed regions, according to the International Labour Organisation, which puts the global number of victims at close to 21 million.

In Europe, groups say the numbers are rising with the global economic crisis and conflicts in various regions, and they are pushing government officials to take action against trafficking and prostitution.

The Brussels-based European Women’s Lobby (EWL), which works for gender equality, launched a high-profile campaign ahead of the recent Summer Olympic Games that asked members of the European Parliament to come out against prostitution.

The group said that “thousands of young girls and women were at risk of trafficking and sexual exploitation to satisfy the demand for prostitution on the sidelines” of major sporting events such as the Olympic Games and the UEFA Euro 2012 football tournament in Poland and Ukraine.

Migrant women in precarious economic situations increasingly face the danger of being forced into prostitution, non-governmental organisations say.

“Amongst the many forms of violence against women, prostitution remains a key area where women’s rights are pervasively violated,” Pierrette Pape, the EWL’s policy officer and project coordinator, told IPS.

The EWL first began the ‘Together for a Europe free from prostitution’ campaign in 2010. As the largest umbrella organisation of women’s associations in the EU, it receives input and support from other groups, many of who will participate in EWL’s European conference on prostitution on Dec. 4 in Brussels.

“Prostitution constitutes a fundamental violation of women’s human rights, and is a form of male violence against women,” said Anna Hedh, a Swedish MEP who supports the campaign.

“Furthermore, prostitution is also the major pull factor in Europe’s modern slave trade – human trafficking. If we achieve a society free from prostitution and sexual exploitation of women and girls, we will also get rid of a large share of human trafficking in the EU,” she said.

Nusha Yonkova, anti-trafficking coordinator at the Immigrant Council of Ireland, an EWL associate, told IPS that migrant women who get involved in the commercial sex trade face multiple challenges.

These include “insecurity in relation to the immigration status (such as) the potential breach of immigration law on top of prostitution-related law; criminalisation by the state; isolation and lack of friends; disorientation from the constant movements around brothels in different towns; vulnerability to extortion and blackmail; control by pimps and advertisers and lack of medical care (apart from certain clinics for sexually transmitted diseases).”

The EWL added that migrant women also face hurdles to their “effective integration” into the labour market.

“This goes beyond simply finding employment but includes obtaining work that utilises and values their qualifications and skills,” the group told IPS.

Migrant women “tend to find work in traditional women’s roles…where they often work long hours for low pay and may be at risk of being severely exploited, especially if (they are) working in households.”

Throughout the EU, many migrant women and men are also denied the right to work in the formal labour market because of their legal status as asylum-seekers, joining spouses or undocumented migrants, EWL says.

“Long periods of denial of the right to work, as is the case for asylum-seekers, have proven to be a huge obstacle to their future integration into the labour market,” the group says.

In Ireland, a country that produced huge migrant populations of its own over several generations, migrant women are in a “very precarious” situation, according to Yonkova of the Immigrant Council.

“The work permit is expensive and almost impossible to get because almost all categories of work are ineligible for non-EU nationals at present,” she told IPS.

“Most women in prostitution are trying to maintain a student status in Ireland but this is also difficult because the courses are expensive and the renewal requires attendance, which these women usually cannot demonstrate. They are becoming additional prey to ‘immigration consultants’ who are trying to arrange for them fake college credentials and statements.”

The Immigrant Council says, “There are on average 1,000 women in the Irish sex industry on any given day.”

However, the group adds that it “cannot estimate how many of them turn to prostitution or how many are compelled by other people or blackmailed or threatened, and how many are minors (which we see all the time)”.

Even in cases where women do obtain some money from prostitution, this hardly amounts to a livelihood, advocates say.

“We want to note that the Irish migrant organisations that advocate for rights of migrants do not accept prostitution as ‘livelihood’. We deplore voices that advocate for the rights of poorer migrants to sell themselves in order to earn a living, (without offering) them any real occupational possibilities. This is (…) inherently racist,” Yonkova said.

Migrant women involved in the sex trade in Europe originate from diverse regions. In Ireland, they come mainly from Latin America, the “poorest Eastern countries (including the ghettos of EU member states)”, with others travelling from Brazil, Romania and Nigeria as well, the Immigrant Council says.

In Belgium, where the EWL is based, women in prostitution mainly come from Bulgaria, Albania and Romania. “We now see women from Hungary, Italy and Greece, which really shows that the system of prostitution exploits the most vulnerable,” the group told IPS.

Italy and Greece, for instance, have both seen their economies decline and have had to introduce unprecedented austerity measures.

In France, where prostitution itself is not illegal – but pimping and brothel ownership are – some 70 percent of the country’s estimated 20,000 prostitutes are foreigners. They come mainly from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as from sub-Saharan Africa.

A number of French lawmakers are attempting to outlaw prostitution, a move that many sex workers themselves have opposed.

In July, sex workers and rights activists took to the streets in Paris and other cities to demonstrate against a proposal by France’s new Women’s Rights Minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, to penalise those caught soliciting prostitutes on the street.

The workers said that criminalising prostitution would ostracise them further from society and take away their meagre livelihood.

(END)

By Ahmed Usman
KANO, Nigeria, Oct 16 2012 (IPS)

Locals in the city of Maiduguri in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno have intensified their calls for the military to withdraw from the town, the stronghold of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, after claims that they are being maltreated and abused.

The people residing in Maiduguri have been paying a heavy price for the Islamists’ guerrilla war, as the security forces accuse them of non-cooperation and shielding the Islamists.

“We are terribly disturbed by the wave of incessant retaliatory attacks by security forces on us,” local resident Bulama Abbagana told IPS.

“Even if we were in a state of war with a rival country, civilians should not be killed and maimed in the way the military is doing,” Abbagana angrily told IPS over the phone.

Boko Haram, whose name means “western education is sin”, has for the past three years been attacking government institutions, including suicide bombings of the United Nations building in the capital, Abuja. The worst attack was the Jan. 20 assault at the ancient city of Kano that claimed over 180 lives.

Boko Haram has adopted a Taliban style approach and is alleged to have links with Al Qaeda in North Africa. They want to impose Islamic law in a country sharply divided between a majority Muslim north and Christian south.

One resident who does not want his name in print for fear of reprisals told IPS: “We wish to be left with Boko Haram, we would have incurred less trouble than with the military.”

Maiduguri, the headquarters of Boko Haram activity in Nigeria and the staging point for the insurgents, appears to have become a battleground.

The most recent attack was on Monday, Oct. 15 when sustained strikes on the city by government soldiers resulted in a number of bomb explosions and the lockdown of the city centre. On Sunday, Oct. 14 the city was rocked by a roadside blast and two separate gun attacks that killed at least four people including a local chief, residents and the military said.

Prior to this, on Oct. 8, indiscriminate shooting allegedly committed by the members of the Joint Task Force resulted in further violence.

It is claimed that Nigerian troops in Maiduguri went berserk after their patrol vehicle was hit with an Improvised Explosive Device, killing two soldiers, including a lieutenant, and injuring others. They were alleged to have started shooting indiscriminately in a densely-populated area of Lagos Street.

Residents say over 30 people were killed in the assault, and houses, businesses and shops were burnt down and vandalised.

“If you see the level of damage on our burnt houses and shops, you may shed tears,” Bana Modu, whose own house suffered severe damage, told IPS.

The feud between Nigerian security forces and residents in Maiduguri has reached its climax, with both sides pointing a finger of blame at each other.

The security forces claim that residents are not helping in the fight against Boko Haram. In several instances, the military have complained bitterly, accusing civilians of colluding with the attackers, as Islamists have launched attacks on them from rooftops and trees.

In turn, local residents complain that the security forces regard every person in civilian clothes as an enemy.

“Whenever there is a bomb explosion, the security used to besiege the area and beat any one found in their way. Some are killed in the process,” banker Abubakar Mohammed told IPS over the phone.

Businesses here have been crippled in the last three years.

“Many people have fled the area. I don’t have anywhere to go, but I could have left to escape from the attacks from two fronts: Boko Haram and the security forces,” Msheliza Dalwa told IPS.

The government of Borno state, where the crisis erupted in 2009, has shown no interest in withdrawing the troops, and has merely urged the security forces to respect individuals.

“Believe me, if the federal government withdraws the Joint Task Force from Borno, all of us will be chased out of the state by insurgents,” state Governor Kashim Shettima said, addressing journalists on the topic of the recent assault.

Shehu Sani, president of the Civil Right Congress, a local human rights group in Nigeria, told IPS: “The Nigerian security forces have been using disproportionate force which we see of equal magnitude with that of Boko Haram.”

According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, no fewer than 2,800 people have been killed in the attacks largely claimed by the Islamists since the violence began in 2009. A report released by the global rights watchdog last week says Boko Haram’s assaults could be described as crimes against humanity.

“We will be happy to punish those committing wanton killings before the International Criminal Court so that those involved will not go free,” Ibarhim Badamasi, a resident in Maiduguri, told IPS.

The Joint Task Force is accused of embarking on house-to-house searches to hunt down the insurgents, and is alleged to have engaged in secret detentions.

“Some people arrested are dying in military cells without food, even the way people are being tortured could lead to the death of many,” a suspect arrested and subsequently released told IPS on condition of anonymity.

The security forces have denied committing killings and torture while restoring order. In a press statement to reporters, Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa said his men did not kill or assault civilians.

“There are no established or recorded cases of extra-judicial killings, torture, arson and arbitrary arrests by the JTF in Borno state,” Musa said in a statement.

“Very few cases of unprofessional conduct by some personnel are documented and those concerned have been punished while others are undergoing legal processes and Court Marshal,” he added.

The JTF has declared success in the fight against Boko Haram. It claims to have arrested over 60 members on Oct. 7 and killed a commander called Bakaka or “one-eyed man”, who is said to be close to the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau. It also claimed to have killed the sect’s spokesman, Abu Qaqa.

However, in a video message posted on YouTube, Shekau refuted the claims of Qaqa’s death. He only admitted that some members have been killed and their wives arrested by Nigerian forces.

A recent report by a U.N. panel of experts highlights the connection between the recent political instability in Côte d’Ivoire and Mali, and suggests that radical Islamists with links with Al Qaeda’s North Africa branch are attempting to strengthen their presence across Africa, Boko Haram included.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world: 65 percent of the population here lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day, and nearly one in 10 children die before their fifth birthday. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

By Charity Chimungu Phiri
BLANTYRE, Oct 16 2012 (IPS)

Patrick Martin, 14, and his brother Mayeso, 15, are safely home for the moment with their mother and other siblings in Kasonya village, Phalombe District in southern Malawi, after they and 12 other children were rescued from being trafficked to neighbouring Mozambique last month by their father.

Every farming season, people from Phalombe District are taken to the southern African country of Mozambique to earn their families enough money to buy a bicycle – which is considered a luxury in a country were 65 percent of its 16 million people live below the poverty line.

The story of these children is one of many familiar occurrences in Malawi at the moment, as government statistics indicate that at least 1.4 million children are involved in child labour and 20 percent of them are being trafficked domestically and internationally for the sex industry and illegal adoption.

But the future safety of these boys remains uncertain, and they may be forced into child labour again, as out of date laws in the country mean that their father will get off with merely a slap on the wrist for his crime. The country has no human trafficking law, and while there is a provision against child trafficking in Section 79 of the Child Care Protection and Justice Act, it is not being correctly implemented.

Their father, James Martin, 31, will be released from Mulanje prison after a mere 18 months. He, together with James Banda, 23; Daniel Thumpwa, 21; and Dickson Kambewa, 37, was charged for engaging children under the age of 18 in child labour.

The were charged under the Employment Act, and not on child trafficking according to Section 79 of the Child Care Protection and Justice Act.

The Child Care Protection and Justice Act, which became a law in December 2011, stipulates that a trafficker should serve a maximum sentence of life imprisonment when they are caught trafficking children under the age of 16.

Maxwell Matewere, the executive director of the non-governmental organisation Eye of the Child, which prioritises the fight against child trafficking, told IPS that the country’s laws are making it difficult for organisations and the police to work to their fullest in the fight against the practice.

“The problem now is that magistrates are not using the Child Care and Protection Justice Act to pass sentences mainly because it is not mandatory and also depends on mitigating factors such as at what level of engagement was a child rescued and his age.

“Furthermore, in Malawi we do not have a law on human trafficking so when offenders are caught by the police and charged with human trafficking the charge is changed in court because there is no such law,” he said.

“A Zambian man who was arrested for trafficking children from Dedza (in Malawi’s Central Region) to work in maize farms in Zambia, was released after he paid a fine,” he said.

Matewere added that the current Child Protection and Justice Act is quite limited in a number of ways.

“The law only provides for the definition of child trafficking as an offence punishable by life imprisonment; however, it does not give any mechanism as to how victims could be identified and cared for. It also is silent on other pressing factors like the definition of recruitment, and on what would happen to an NGO (for example an orphanage that engages in illegal adoption) or a bus company that is involved in transferring of children,” he said.

Matewere said unless the government has the political will to deal with the root factors of the problem, which he identifies as poverty, unemployment, lack of education and lack of national identification, more children will continue to be trafficked.

Deputy national police spokesman Kelvin Maigwa told IPS that between January and August this year, 43 cases of child trafficking were reported, of which the numbers were equal between male and female children.

“The reason why these children are being taken away from their homes is because their masters are looking for cheap labour so they get the children to work in tea and tobacco estates and pay them peanuts because they know they can’t complain. The girls are mainly brought to work in prostitution in bars and taverns where they are used to woo customers and sometimes to cut beer packets, they are also employed in domestic work as nannies or housekeepers in cities and towns,” he said.

Herbert Bimphi, chairman of the parliamentary social welfare committee and Democratic Progressive Party member of parliament for Ntchisi North, told IPS that in the absence of a law on human trafficking the courts will continue passing sentences that are not in line with what is actually happening.

“But the information that I have is that the Law Commission has drafted the Trafficking Persons’ Bill and that now it is at the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs. The minister responsible will then bring it to the House so that we can scrutinise it then call on other experts to look at it again if it is well-written, then we will debate on it and then formally adopt it,” he said.

Minister of Gender and Child Welfare Anita Kalinde told IPS that the Trafficking Persons Bill is being finalised, but that there are other laws on protection of children, which have adequate provisions.

“What needs to be done however is the popularisation of the laws through community education of the legal provisions; and translating of the Act into local languages so that people can demand their rights,” she said.

Kalinde did acknowledge, however, that the sentences being passed on offenders are not satisfactory “considering the fact that the trafficked child’s future has been ruined. I would have preferred stiffer penalties.”

She further said the government has put in place several mechanisms to help reduce poverty among families who are at risk of engaging in trafficking and child labour.

Kalinde singled out the agriculture subsidy, where the poorest families buy farm inputs at reduced prices, thereby enabling them to produce enough for their families.

However, Maigwa told IPS that the country’s laws could be luring the offenders to commit the crime again.

“In general, some of our laws are outdated and weak…they are not in line with the current situation. At the time when they were being formulated they were strong but now for example if you ask an offender to pay a K200 fine (equivalent to a dollar) for assaulting someone for example, no one can fail to do that so they go and offend again.”

Phalombe District police spokesman Augustus Nkhwazi told IPS that traffickers are illegally crossing into Mozambique easily because no Malawian police officers are stationed at the border post.

“When these people are entering that country they are perceived to be the children’s parents or guardians because people from the two countries have established trade relationships as well as intermarriages. As such there is movement on these borders every day,” said Nkhwazi.

Nkhwazi further said the practice is more common now in his district due to poverty and lack of enough farmland and also the willingness by parents to engage in the practice.

Maigwa is however optimistic that the times are changing with the engagement of the Police Force’s Child Protection Officer in every district over five years ago.

“Each police station has a Community Policing Unit where we have the Child Protection Officer who basically engages the masses in civic education, teaching them on the tricks that child traffickers may use when they come to their homes, such as a promise of a better paying job or drastic economic changes for the children…so we believe people are becoming more knowledgeable of this crime than before,” he said.

When the crops in her rural highlands community in southern Peru were covered with a thick layer of ice one night, Felícitas Quispe, 43, organised her neighbours to make an effort to keep people from starving to death.

It’s been two years since the 2010 freeze left her and dozens of families without corn, potatoes or beans to cover their needs, and without pasture to graze their animals in the rural town of Chare, more than 3,500 metres above sea level in the Andean department of Cuzco.

“There was no food, so the women went with the leaders of the community to the civil defence institute and the agriculture ministry. We got new seeds that are still producing our food today, and we continue to burn manure to produce smoke to protect the crops from freezing,” she told IPS.

Quispe is the president of the Qamayoc Association that provides technical assistance in animal health, the use of medicinal plants, and decent housing for women in local highlands communities, where “life is very sad” because of the poverty, and where even water is scarce, she said.

Indigenous women in rural Peru have to walk longer and longer distances to find firewood. Credit: Elena Villanueva/IPS

“We don’t want handouts from the government – that breeds idleness. We want gender equity, training for women, education and healthcare; we don’t want our children to die because they can’t get medical attention, since it takes a day to walk down from the mountains to reach a health clinic,” she said.

Although Peru has managed to reduce under-five child mortality by 76 percent, severe inequality and high levels of rural poverty pose serious risks to children in areas vulnerable to climate swings and weather disasters.

According to the United Nations children’s fund, UNICEF, children represent 65 percent of those affected by climate disasters, which in the last 10 years have affected 64 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The largely indigenous population of Peru’s southern Andean region is in danger. The region of Puno, over 4,000 metres above sea level, is experiencing freezes that have ruined crops and killed babies. In March, health authorities reported 31 deaths of children from pneumonia.

Ricardina Bedoya, a 64-year-old peasant farmer who lives in the Puno community of Arboleda, is among those who have been facing difficulties.

She lost her crops in the 2011-2012 harvest season when lake Umayo overflowed its banks due to intense rainfall. The grass that her livestock grazed rotted at the roots, and her potato, quinoa, barley and oca – a tuber grown like potatoes – crops were destroyed.

Her land was under water, she had no crops to take to the market, and she was forced to sell off her animals at a low price.

“We had nothing to cook, the kids got sick with whooping cough and bronchopneumonia, and many died before making it to the health post,” she told IPS. “It’s really hard, but we want our daughters to learn to cope with the problems nature throws at us, and to continue on with their lives, their growing of food, their education.”

Although her community had taken prevention measures, these fell short given the magnitude of the flooding. Now they are preparing to apply for government support, to build sheds for the animals and plant crops in new areas.

The efforts of Felícitas Quispe in Cuzco and Ricardina Bedoya in Puno are an illustration of the initiatives led by women who are taking an active role in the face of complex situations that experts attribute to climate change.

Although women are hit hardest by the effects of floods, freezes or drought, they are the ones who assume the responsibilities of feeding and taking care of their families and communities, said Castorina Villegas López, coordinator in Peru for Groots International (Grassroots Organisations Operating Together in Sisterhood), a U.S.-based grassroots women’s leadership development and networking project.

Saturday Oct. 13, International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction, is dedicated by the United Nations to “Women and Girls – the [in]Visible Force of Resilience”, to highlight the role that women and girls play in risk reduction.

Women and girls “organise themselves on the basis of their capacities and skills, and respond, for example, by contributing to food security. And they do this despite the gender inequality that is ignored by society, by the government and by men,” Villegas López told IPS.

In observance of the International Day of Rural Women, Monday Oct. 15, organised groups of Peruvian peasant women will present an agenda of proposals on five climate change-related areas.

IPS had access to the document, signed by women farmers from southern departments (Arequipa, Apurímac, Cuzco and Puno) and northern departments (Cajamarca, La Libertad, Lambayeque and Piura), which calls on local, regional and national authorities to take into account the gender differentiated impacts of global warming, and to apply public policies to put an end to the neglect that rural women suffer.

The five areas covered by the proposals are food security, natural resources, agricultural production and trade, women’s work in the field and the home, and living conditions.

The rural women are asking for a strengthening of irrigation infrastructure, the construction of family and community water storage reservoirs, reforestation with native species, upgrading of housing, access to agro-ecological techniques and inputs, and participation in decision-making spaces, among other things.

Rural girls and women have the highest illiteracy rate in the country: 14.4 percent, compared to 7 percent for the overall population, according to the National Households Survey of 2010. And 75 percent of illiterate people in Peru are women, according to the Defensoría del Pueblo (ombudsman’s office).

Meanwhile, only 63.7 percent of births in rural areas are attended by skilled health personnel, and 19 percent of adolescent girls have been pregnant, according to the ministry of women and vulnerable populations.

“Women have aptitudes that must be strengthened,” and they have “concrete proposals that are contained in their agenda, which the authorities must take into consideration,” said Blanca Fernández of the Centro Flora Tristán women’s centre.

Among the eight objectives of the National Plan on Equality and Gender 2012-2017, approved by the government in July, is recognition of the contribution of rural women to the sustainable management of natural resources.

To that end, the plan proposes that the proportion of women who receive training and technology transfer be increased by 30 percent over the next five years, and that a disaster response and risk prevention plan with a gender focus be designed.

Fernández believes these targets are important, but says that meeting them depends on political will. “Budget funds are needed to make rural women a priority,” she said. “Otherwise, we will not be able to make progress towards the diverse, intercultural Peru that we want.”

Greeks citizens protesting against the public spending cuts that have accompanied the austerity package. Credit: Bego Astigarraga/IPS

By Apostolis Fotiadis
ATHENS, Oct 10 2012 (IPS)

Like a person on life support whose vital functions are failing, the Greek economy is slowly but surely shutting down as radiation from the so-called ‘austerity plan’ erodes public institutions.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived here on Tuesday morning for an economic assessment of the debt-ravaged country, she did not see the things that, for thousands, have become commonplace: cancer patients dying outside clinics, unable to access the treatment they need, or kindergartens turning students away due to overcapacity.

Meanwhile, international financial institutions continue to drag their feet on how best to solve the debt crisis and revive the country’s banking system.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samara publicly stated last week that Greece will be “unable to go on without further international financial aid after November”, referring to the long-awaited 31.5-billion-euro bailout. This amount is only the latest tranche of a 110-billion-euro loan that the eurozone and the IMF earmarked for Greece back in May 2010, conditional on the implementation of austerity measures.

In October 2011, eurozone leaders agreed to offer a second, 130-billion-euro, financial bailout.

Disbursement of this loan has been momentarily stalled due to a stalemate between the IMF and its European counterparts (the European Commission and the European Central Bank) over whether Greece will be able to meet its debt obligations in the near future.

Sources close to the government told IPS that the IMF is even considering opting out of the Troika, the body that has been responsible for negotiating and implementing a severe austerity plan for more than two years.

Over the next few days, Merkel, a staunch supporter of the massive public spending cuts required by the austerity package, will push the Greek government to reduce public spending by a further 13 billion dollars.

A malfunctioning state

But state employees say additional cuts will be fatal. Already crucial state institutions are showing serious signs of malfunction or even collapse, with hospitals, schools, day-care centres, social security funds, tax offices and courts all struggling to withstand budgetary lacerations.

Giannis Tsounis, secretary general of the federation of municipalities (POE-OTA), an umbrella for all the major municipal unions in Greece, told IPS that the municipal administration is on the verge of collapse.

“Before the crisis the state dedicated 169 million euros to municipalities. Now that number has reduced to 95 million and will eventually reach 72 million.

“Next year they will enlarge our portfolio by adding 113 responsibilities (to our mandate), which we will be expected to carry out after a 60 percent reduction in resources,” according to Tsounis.

“There are 65,000 municipal workers in Greece and 10,000 will (retire) in the next few months,” Tsounis added. “According to austerity plans they won’t be replaced.

“In order to unburden the central administration of responsibilities, the Minister of Interior gets rid of the problem by pushing various functions of the government onto the municipal level.

“Some municipalities are already using money allocated for other purposes to pay wages while many workers remain unpaid for months,” said Tsounis.

“We cannot keep functioning like this, where there is no money left even to maintain public swimming pools, or pay kindergarten teachers their wages.”

A more silent, but equally dangerous breakdown is looming over the health sector, according to Giorgos Vixas, a cardiologist running a makeshift yet highly efficient clinic in Elliniko in South Athens.

Some weeks ago, during a radio debate with Vixas, the Greek minister of health was forced to admit that the public health system is unable to provide medical assistance to an uninsured person.

Most workers lose their insurance barely a year after they are laid off. Self-employed people lose the possibility of medical care the minute they fail to renew their insurance.

According to the labour inspectorate one in every three workers is uninsured. Roughly 57.2 percent of uninsured labourers are Greek and 42.8 percent are migrant workers.

Vixas believes the government has made a “huge mistake” by cutting state budgets and restricting access to public healthcare during a time of crisis.

“Many people with serious conditions are left without medicine, diagnostic examinations, or surgery. People do not take their drugs for months because they can’t afford them. Three cancer patients that came here, to this very clinic, died because they had no access to chemotherapy.”

Agios Savvas and Metaxa, two specialised cancer hospitals, have directed patients to Vixas’ makeshift clinic for drugs.

“A woman who had miscarried came here, with the foetus still inside her. She needed an emergency operation but no public clinic would accept her. We managed to send her to a private clinic that offered her a free abortion,” he added.

“In other cases various doctors continue to treat excluded patients in public hospitals despite a term in the austerity memorandum that states that when a doctor offers services informally, he or she must cover the expense themselves,” Vixas said.

He also predicted that the health sector budget would be choked by “another 1.5 billion euros, bringing total cuts to five billion euros since the austerity package was first implemented.”

Antonis Liakopoulos, deputy president of the Association of Attika Police Officers, told IPS that even public safety is at risk due to financial constraints.

Policemen have taken a six percent wage reduction, before taxes. Often, those who work the night shifts are not paid at all, and none receives wages for anything more than 48 hours of work despite working much longer hours.

“More than 35 percent of police officers have a second job. Plenty of our colleagues are forced to shoulder the expense of adding petrol, or changing tires. Many police vehicles are immobilised” due to inadequate repairs, he added.

“A reduction in the quality of safety services might open the door to corruption within the police structure, though the risk of this is low at the moment,” said Liakopoulos.

Stavros Lygeros, a popular economic and political commentator and author of the best-selling analysis on the Greek crisis, ‘From Cleptocracy to Bankruptcy’, told IPS austerity policies are fast destroying the capacities of the Greek state.

“We are observing a rapid deterioration of governability. The preconditions for (total) collapse, characterised by defunct state institutions, are approaching fast.”

It is of ultimate importance that European partners understand where the austerity package is leading Greek society, Lygeros warned.

What Greece is experiencing is not what the IMF calls “economic therapy”, but rather a slow death, he said.

“No country can do what the Troika is asking for. No society can accept a devaluation of such proportions,” Lygeros concluded.

(END)