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“When I was still at school I was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, along with 139 other girls,” says Grace Akallo. “I spent seven months in captivity, but I survived, I escaped and I went back home.”
Twelve years ago, when Akallo was still a child, her life took an unexpected turn when she fell into the hands of Joseph Kony’s notoriously brutal rebel force known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Grace Akallo. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
Today, she is married with a child, a masters degree and a mission in life: to give a voice to the female child soldier.
Formed in Uganda in the 1980s, and now operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the LRA remains among the most persistent perpetrators of grave violations against children, according to a recent U.N report.
“When girls are first abducted, it is the same as for boy soldiers,” Akallo told IPS. “They are beaten and mistreated, they are trained to become child soldiers, given AK-47s, and forced to kill.
“Most of the children are sent to the forefront, with the leaders behind them. Your bullets are finished? You shoot your friend in order to get more bullets. At the same time the leaders used children as shields, so that the children get shot and they survive.”
What makes a girl child soldier different is the sexual abuse that they are forced to endure, says Akallo. “Most girls were sexually abused, including me. I was lucky I did not return home with a child, or get infected with HIV or any other disease.
“Many of these girls had to give birth while in captivity, some of them had to go fighting with children on their backs, and some gave birth on the battlefield,” she said.
But the plight of the female child soldier is largely hidden from view, masked by the leaders of armed groups who refer to girl combatants as “wives” or “sisters”.
Girls are summarily awarded to male combatants, and Kony is reported to have had up to 50 girls in his immediate household at one time.
“Some are given to just one commander, and some are given to multiple men,” Akallo told IPS.
Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration
Due to the roles that girls play, including cooking, domestic tasks, transporting provisions and sexual services, they are rendered almost invisible, under the radar of international law and disarmament initiatives.
Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes have been in operation since the 1980s and the U.N launched its formal set of guidelines in 2006. But progress has been patchy, especially regarding girl soldiers.
“When you disarm somebody, you ask them to return their arms. Many of the female child soldiers do not carry arms. They are used as sex slaves and bush wives. From that point of view, I do not think that DDR has been successful,” Ugoji Adanma, founder of the Eng Aja Eze Foundation, which helps women and girls emerging from conflict, told IPS.
International law has also “dramatically excluded” female soldiers, according to Matthew Brotmann, director of international programmes and adjunct professor of law at Pace Law School, speaking at a Jun. 4 conference titled “The Incidence of the Female Child Soldier and the International Criminal Court”.
By failing to include specific gender-related definitions in legal instruments and policy guidelines, “We are forcing a square peg into a round hole,” Brottman told IPS.
“We cannot treat all victims the same regardless of gender,” he said.
In the recent trial of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the enlistment of children as soldiers was enshrined as a war crime for the first time.
But commanders of Lubanga’s militia group, the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), were not held to account for allegations of rape, which raises fundamental questions about the bias of international law.
“The incidence of the female child soldier was not really taken into consideration. It was noted, but why did the prosecutors not tender the evidence of core witnesses as to the sexual violence against females? That is my concern,” Adanma told IPS.
Reconciling communities
The reintegration of female child soldiers poses one of the greatest challenges for ex-combatants and those endeavouring to protect them, from grassroots NGOs to governments and the international community.
Funding is lacking, and though donors are quick to respond in emergencies, reintegration often falls into the murky area between emergency assistance and development assistance.
“In Sierra Leone, where we worked on rehabilitation hospitals and education, to open up schools where girls could go, my message was carry the pen and not the gun,” Rima Salah, former deputy executive director of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, told IPS.
But the complexity of reintegrating ex-combatants defies simple solutions.
“Neither boy nor girl child soldiers are really accepted back into society, but for the girl child soldier it is (harder) when they have unwanted children,” Akallo told IPS.
“The boy child soldier can go back to school, train and develop life skills but for a girl, for her to go back to school and try and acquire life skills they have to think of their children, arrange babysitting or stay at home.
“With boys, people can forget that they used to be soldiers, but the girl soldier walks with a child, which makes her past unforgettable. The stigma stays with her,” Akallo explained.
“Personally, I struggled a lot. I was called names – ‘Kony’s wife’, ‘Kony’s prostitute’ – even the girls that I worked with would call me names.
“Social workers, and people working with girl child soldiers have to be really very strong to be able to walk with these girls in the community.”
Akallo recently founded an NGO based in northern Uganda called United Africans For Women and Children Rights that emphasises the importance of ensuring former child soldiers are accepted back into their communities.
“What we do is mostly focused on the reintegration and rehabilitation of children,” Akallo told IPS.
The NGO is currently in the process of building a community health centre and a counselling centre, which will focus on reconciling the community.
“It is very important that girl child soldiers are reintegrated into the community otherwise they are left to fend for themselves,” she said.
Looked upon as soiled, stigmatised as HIV carriers, and ostracised as mothers to children born of war, without support female ex-combatants have few doors open to them in society.
“Many female ex-combatants turn to prostitution,” she said. “They may no longer be child soldiers but they are forced to trade in their freedom once more.”
At a news conference shortly after she was sworn in as Malawi’s president, Joyce Banda announced her government’s intention to decriminalise homosexuality. It is unclear how she will achieve this, but the move is in stark contrast to the approach of her predecessor, Bingu wa Mutharika, who openly condemned it.
In a region in which lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights have often been rejected in the name of traditional values, Banda’s stance is bound to attract attention. Hopefully, it will bring about some rethinking of policies that discriminate against LGBT people and often even criminalise homosexual practices.
In fact, Banda has taken a series of brave stands since she took office. Her refusal last week to host the African Union summit in July because the AU insists on having President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan there, despite his outstanding arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, is just one of them.
And amending LGBT rights is another indication of her determination to lead Malawi back onto the path of being a forward-looking democracy and a state that respects universal human rights and global bodies such as the ICC over and above parochial interests.
Banda, the former vice president, inherited a grim economic situation when she took office in April, the first woman to become a head of state in the southern African region. Soon after taking office, she announced that she intended to repeal repressive laws and policies, some of them passed under Mutharika’s rule, including the laws criminalising same-sex acts.
The repeal of these repressive laws would be good news for Malawi and for Africa. It would not only spare members of the LGBT community the fear of prosecution, but would also negate the legitimisation of violence, abuse, and discrimination based on sexual orientation.
It would also be the first time since 1994 that an African country has repealed anti-LGBT legislation, and would add renewed impetus to global efforts toward decriminalisation of same-sex conduct.
How then will Banda’s announcement be viewed by other African leaders? Coming as it does just before the AU Summit on Jul. 15 and 16, Banda’s decision may reignite the discussion of traditional values, in a desperate attempt by some to reverse progress made through years of activism and international jurisprudence. Such a move should not be allowed to take hold.
Under Mutharika’s rule, the situation in Malawi was quite different. In April 2010, Malawi authorities arrested and prosecuted Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a transgender woman, and Steven Monjeza, a man, after a local newspaper published pictures of their “engagement party.”
After an international outcry, Mutharika pardoned the two on “humanitarian grounds” but said the couple had committed crimes against Malawian tradition and culture. To underscore the point, in December 2010 the Malawian parliament extended existing laws criminalising same-sex acts between men to include same-sex acts between women.
Mutharika died in April after eight years in office that did little to address the corruption and poverty in Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest countries. During 2011, as the economic situation deteriorated and public grievances grew, the government became increasingly repressive. On Jul. 20, police fired on a demonstration, killing 19 people and wounding dozens more. Hundreds were arrested.
Multiple donors suspended aid programmes, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Norway, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank, citing bad governance and mismanagement of funds.
Although sanctions may be useful in seeking to secure and protect human rights, any attempts to single out LGBT rights in this process has backfired as politicians have used this to divert the people’s attention from their own corrupt practices. The government sought to blame the LGBT community for the cuts in donor aid, provoking increased homophobia and threats against known supporters of LGBT rights.
In part for this reason, the public perception of Banda’s motives in saying she intends to decriminalise homosexuality may be more contentious. Some in Malawi and in the region will see her move as bowing to international pressure.
The issue of donors imposing conditions on their aid has long been a bone of contention for African states, but the LGBT issue has spurred new debate. While good governance and respect for human rights should be core standards underpinning donor programmes, many African activists, including international human rights advocates, oppose the use of aid conditionality to promote protection of LGBT communities in Africa.
After British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to suspend direct aid to repressive governments, especially countries that had laws, policies, and practices that subjected LGBT communities to discrimination and abuse, some African social justice activists wrote to him expressing their disapproval, saying:
“The imposition of donor sanctions may be one way of seeking to improve the human rights situation in a country but does not, in and of itself, result in the improved protection of the rights of LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) people. They tend, as has been evidenced in Malawi, to exacerbate the environment of intolerance in which political leadership scapegoat LGBTI people for donor sanctions in an attempt to retain and reinforce national state sovereignty.”
But Malawi, South Africa, and others should stand firm against any effort to reject LGBT rights as human rights.
As Banda acts to rebuild the country’s economy and roll back the recent human rights repression, decriminalisation is an important first step. However, it needs to be accompanied by a real commitment to address public homophobia, and support civil society efforts to promote human rights more broadly — efforts that donors should support.
It will take more than the repeal of the laws to change public perceptions and attitudes. Banda’s efforts will need a holistic focus on rights and civil liberties for all Malawians, including LGBT individuals. Forming strategic partnerships with civil society organisations to prevent all form of discrimination — including on the basis of sexual orientation — will not only circumvent homophobic sentiments but also promote greater public participation and ownership of the reform process.
*Monica Tabengwa is an LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Seated under a tree, biologist Zozo Bazomba welcomes a steady stream of visitors to the Action Nature et Médecine centre in Bumbu commune in the DRC. Suffering from a range of ailments, they have come from across Kinshasa, the capital, in search of sachets of powdered moringa leaves.
Action Nature et Médecine (ANAMED) is a non-governmental organisation leading an effort to promote the health benefits of the leaves and seeds of the Moringa olifeira tree in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The NGO has a ten-hectare plantation of the trees at Mingadi, in the western province of Bas-Congo.
Jean-Baulin Mbo, 68, who suffered a stroke, said that regular consumption of moringa leaves is what is keeping him alive. “I’ve made a habit of eating moringa since I discovered this plant. I often have the powder with tea, in porridge, in milk or in a soft drink,” he told IPS. Others who have come looking for moringa are suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure or poor nutrition.
Elsewhere in the neighbourhood, at the Libondi Health Centre’s nutrition unit, Eric Kiambi marveled at the results he’s seeing using moringa with malnourished children. “Before, we struggled with having too many children to care for while waiting for soy milk from our (donor) partners. But now, with moringa, the centre shelters around 20 malnourished kids,” the nutritionist told IPS.
“Moringa’s become a staple in a fair number of households,” said another worker at the centre, Vénantie Wabo. “It’s an alternative in cases of micronutrient deficits. With nothing more than powdered moringa, one can quickly restore the health of a child suffering from even acute malnutrition.”
Anne Biyela brought her eight-year-old grandson Nkanza to the centre for care.
“When we arrived here, my grandson had swollen feet (a warning sign of kwashiorkor, a severe protein deficiency in children). Many people thought he wouldn’t survive a week. But a daily helping of porridge with moringa powder has really helped him, and now he’s doing well,” she said.
“The centre encouraged us to use the leaves of this plant as a vegetable in all our meals to maintain the health of the whole family.”
Clotilde Kasowa, a Franciscan missionary who runs an orphanage in the Kinshasa commune of Kintambo, told IPS that none of the children presently in her care suffer from anaemia, thanks to moringa supplements. “They get moringa leaves added to their pondu (a popular Congolese dish of cassava leaves) and the powder in their milk and tea,” she said.
“It’s much better than soy, and we also sell moringa powder. A 75 gramme sachet costs 2,500 Congolese francs (around 2.5 dollars).”
Huguette Ifoto, the head of the kitchen at the orphanage, said they had been caring for nearly 70 malnourished orphans, but only 27 remained after the others got better from eating moringa leaves.
Moringa is also playing a role in protecting the health of people living with HIV. Marie Tsimba’s HIV-positive son was acutely malnourished. “My friends advised me to put some moringa in all of his meals. And 45 days later the results have been excellent, and my son is doing well,” she said.
Jean Lukela, coordinator of a national network of community organisations and support groups for people living with HIV/AIDS, says similar stories are common. “Moringa is a good complement for anti-retroviral medicine. When these drugs were not yet available, we advised people to eat moringa seeds to reinforce their immunity,” he said.
“In fact, we still tell people living with the virus the same thing.”
Sudanese refugees have started dying as a camp in South Sudan ran out of water four days ago after a massive influx of people fled across the border to escape war and hunger.
The refugees are fleeing Sudan’s Blue Nile state where insurgents are fighting to overthrow the Sudanese government.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said earlier in an April report that civilians are suffering from an indiscriminate aerial bombing campaign.
Voitek Asztabski, an emergency coordinator with Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF), said some refugees died as they walked seven to 10 hours to a new site in search of water after camp Kilometer 48 in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state ran out of it on Jun 11.
The agency is still carrying out a mortality survey to find out how many adults and children have died and what the causes are. However, MSF estimates that an average of five to 10 people have died each day since water ran out at the Kilometer 48 camp.
MSF said in a statement on Jun. 13 that “the 15,000 refugees remaining at this location walked en masse the 25 km to the nearest location with available water.”
Heavy rains prevented agencies from moving them by truck on flooded roads.
“We observed people dying of thirst, of dehydration,” Asztabski said by satellite phone from camp Kilometer 18, the new site with limited available water. “That was quite a horrifying activity being witnessed by us here.”
Some people were too weak to respond to medical care.
“We went early on Tuesday morning to provide medical assistance and rehydration points along the route,” said MSF’s Dr. Erna Rijnierse in the statement.
“It was a truly shocking sight as we witnessed some of the weakest dying as they walked – too dehydrated for even the most urgent medical care to save them.”
There are now 105,000 Sudanese refugees from Blue Nile state in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state, according the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, while another 15,000 are on their way.
Asztabski said that refugees are arriving malnourished, dehydrated and diseased after walking from their homes in Blue Nile. Common conditions include pneumonia and other respiratory infections contracted from sleeping outdoors without any shelter, as well as diarrhoea from drinking contaminated water.
He called for a “proactive” approach to the crisis, saying that agencies have instead been reacting to the emergency without putting contingency plans in place. For example, there is no plan for what to do after water runs out at camp Kilometer 18, which will likely happen in about two and a half weeks.
Aid agencies have been warning for months that refugees needed to be relocated before potable water ran out and the rainy season began, making transport extremely difficult. In March, Andrew Omale, an emergency coordinator with Oxfam International, told IPS that the refugee situation in Upper Nile was a “forgotten emergency” and called for more support.
Asztabski said agencies continue to be hampered by a lack of capacity and resources. He compared the scale of the crisis to an area in Ethiopia where he was based last year when famine in Somalia sent refugees over the border into that country as well as Kenya. About 10 million people were affected by the drought in the Horn of Africa. But he said there are fewer resources available for this emergency.
“Everyone is overstretched in this situation,” said Asztabski. “This crisis needs more attention, more investment.”
The refugees began streaming from Blue Nile into South Sudan and Ethiopia in early September after Sudan ousted Blue Nile’s elected state governor, Malik Agar, and replaced him with a military appointee. Agar’s forces have been fighting the government since then, and HRW says civilians have borne the brunt of military abuses.
In its April report, HRW documented reported violations against civilians including arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, beatings and torture. HRW said government forces targeted people they suspected of connections to the group led by Agar, which is known as the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N).
The SPLM-N is active in Blue Nile as well as neighbouring Southern Kordofan state, where the U.N. says 47,000 refugees have fled across the border into South Sudan’s Unity state.
The rebels were formerly part of the SPLM, which fought a two-decade civil war against Khartoum that resulted in South Sudan’s secession. When the South declared independence last July, the SPLM in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile added “North” to their name and declared themselves a separate political party in Sudan. But the SPLM-N took up arms again after accusing Khartoum of cracking down on them.
Sudan has repeatedly denied targeting civilians during its fight against the SPLM-N. But rights groups as well as the British and United States governments have called on Khartoum to stop bombing civilians.
Asztabski said refugees also tell of fleeing the bombing with very few possessions and having to walk for as many as two months to reach the border. “They are telling us horrific stories,” he said. “It’s a very treacherous and exhausting journey.”
Small and large businesses in Malawi are counting their losses following the cabinet’s decision not to host the African Union summit in July.
The decision is based on the government’s refusal to allow Sudanese President Omar Hassan al Bashir permission to enter the country.
Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has accused him of committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s Darfur region. As an ICC member state, Malawi would have been forced to arrest Bashir upon entry.
Vice President Khumbo Kachale announced on Jun. 8 that the cabinet decided against hosting the Jul. 15-16 summit, as it was not in Malawi’s best interests to have Bashir attend. The AU Commission had insisted that the southern African nation allow the Sudanese leader to enter the country.
“Cabinet took this position with the primary consideration of what is in the best interests of Malawians. While we have obligations to abide by the decisions of the African Union, we are also under obligation to other international agreements, including the Rome Statute (which established the ICC),” said Kachale.
However, the decision has had financial ramifications across Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, as it had been all but ready to host the AU.
“Cabinet noted that the state of preparedness of our country is beyond any doubt ready. This was confirmed by the evaluation mission from the African Union which was in the country last week, and left satisfied with the progress made in all aspects of our hosting obligations,” said Kachale.
A number of technical meetings in the days ahead of the summit were lined up to take place in Lilongwe from Jul. 9. The event had promised to turn the otherwise quiet city into a hive of business activity. Up to 35 heads of states and 4,000 delegates were expected to attend and boost the demand for hospitality services and local goods.
Sam Namathanga, president of the Travel Agents Association of Malawi (TAAM), a national grouping of air travel and tour operators, told IPS that the losses for the hospitality industry would be significant. This includes money invested in businesses in preparation for the summit, and estimated future earnings.
“We don’t know the magnitude of the losses yet, but they will be huge. We are talking about loss of business in air ticket sales; ground travel, which includes car hire services; and tour packages, which also includes accommodation,” said Namathanga.
He said that members of TAAM who had hoped to boost their revenue were disappointed.
“The tourism industry has lost a big opportunity. We would have greatly promoted the industry through the summit,” said Namathanga.
A quick informal survey by IPS showed that the average cost of hiring a vehicle in Lilongwe costs 85 dollars per day, while accommodation ranges from 60 to 400 dollars per night.
According to information released by the AU secretariat, all delegates were expected to pay their own costs with the exception of heads of states, heads of delegations and ministers of foreign affairs.
Many small local establishments had seen it as an opportunity to grow their businesses.
Christina Kajawo, who owns a bar and restaurant in the Lilongwe city centre, told IPS that six months ago she began preparing for the summit by renovating her premises. She said she obtained a bank loan of 3,000 dollars because she wanted to make her restaurant and bar look more presentable.
“I hoped that I would make a good profit from the patronage of the bar and restaurant during the AU summit and would be able to pay back the loan,” she said.
Now Kajawo fears that she may have to close down her business.
“I hope I will find a way to pay back the bank, otherwise I may eventually end up being declared bankrupt and lose my livelihood. I feel stranded right now because there isn’t much business from the locals since the Kwacha was devalued and prices of goods have risen,” said Kajawo.
In her quest to salvage the Malawian economy, President Joyce Banda devalued the Kwacha from K168 to K250 to the dollar. The price of commodities and imported goods has increased by an average of 50 percent since the May devaluation.
By devaluing the Kwacha, Banda was responding to requests that the International Monetary Fund and local economists had made to the country’s late President Bingu wa Mutharika. However, Mutharika had repeatedly refused to take the step that economists believed would have saved the country’s failing economy.
The decision to cancel the AU summit is seen as a direct move to appease Malawi’s Western donors, especially the United States and the United Kingdom. In the past, both nations have said that they would not provide aid to any country that hosts Bashir and fails to arrest him.
Malawi’s donor relations are only just being repaired.
In the past, international donors accused Mutharika’s government of failing to respect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and freedom of the press.
When Mutharika was in power, Bashir was allowed entry to Malawi in October 2011 to attend the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa summit. This prompted the U.S. government to put its foot down against providing aid to the poor southern African country.
International donors refused to release up to 400 million dollars and the U.S. suspended a 350-million-dollar grant. At the time, almost 40 percent of Malawi’s national budget was donor dependent.
Many donors have since pledged to help Banda restore the country’s economy following her rise to the presidency after Mutharika’s sudden death on Apr. 5.
It therefore came as no surprise when Kachale made his public address cancelling the AU summit.
Local human rights groups and political commentators have welcomed government’s decision to refuse Bashir entry.
“Malawi should put the interests of its nationals first and President Banda has done exactly that, and this is a great way forward,” Undule Mwakasungula, the head of the prominent Malawi Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation, told IPS.
“We need donors more than anything,” he said.
The summit will now be hosted in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa at the organisation’s headquarters, the AU said on Monday Jun. 11.
Caught between a proverbial rock and a hard place, African and Pacific countries are still unsure whether they should follow the lead of their Caribbean counterparts and sign a wide-ranging Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe.
African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) ministers are meeting here ahead of their joint Council of Ministers meeting with Europe on Thursday and Friday. However, they are still far from completing the negotiations that would allow them to participate in the accord that Europe is using as its main vehicle for trade and other assistance.
Namibia is looking to diversify its beef exports to countries in the global South in order to lessen its dependency on the lucrative EU market. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS
In 2008, the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM), comprising the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Dominican Republic, signed the accord. Ironically, Guyana, which had been reluctant to sign until it received certain assurances, is the only one so far to have ratified the EPA.
“At the time of signing Guyana was able to secure a joint declaration which is appended to the CARIFORUM-EPA indicating that within a five-year period there will be a review of the implementation process to examine to what extent it is adversely affecting our development strategies and this is something… we hope will be incorporated in the other regions as they work to conclude their agreements,” the country’s ambassador to Brussels Dr. P.I. Gomes told IPS.
In its report to the conference here, the Pacific region has described the negotiations with Europe that began in 2004 as “a long and challenging process”.
Tonga’s Labour, Commerce and Industries Minister Isieli Pulu, the lead spokesman for the Pacific grouping, said that while two Pacific states have signed an interim EPA – mainly to avoid market access restrictions – it was always understood that the interim accord “would be a stepping stone towards a comprehensive EPA”.
The Cotonou Agreement signed in 2000 puts in place a cooperation framework aimed at liberalising trade between both the ACP and EU, and also specified that a new World Trade Organization (WTO) compatible regime or an EPA must be agreed by the end of 2007.
Pulu said that the Pacific countries have reaffirmed this commitment and their leaders have mandated “that we continue to negotiate a comprehensive EPA as single region with the European Union which should be concluded by 2012.
But he said while this commitment has been made, the Pacific group wants an EPA “based on principles and objectives enshrined in the Cotonou Agreement” and it “must go far beyond market access arrangements and constitute a trade and development cooperation agreement that will form the basis for the elaboration of a true, strengthened and strategic partnership over time between the Pacific ACP region and the European Union”.
Pulu has accused Europe of “stalling”, noting that it “has continually deferred meeting with the Pacific region for a formal negotiating session since 2009.
“Furthermore, they have not responded to the Pacific’s proposals and market access offers submitted in July 2011. This has seriously threatened the possibility of concluding the negotiations on a comprehensive EPA as called for by the Pacific ACP leaders. Instead, the European Commission has been coercing the Pacific ACP region to accept the interim EPA,” Pulu told the meeting.
He said the delay has reduced the alternatives for several Pacific countries wishing to conclude “a beneficial trading arrangement” with Europe given the implications of the commission’s proposals to amend EU market access regulations.
“In the Pacific region, Fiji could be forced to ratify the interim EPA if the region is not able to satisfactorily conclude a comprehensive EPA by 2014. Major industries in Fiji could face disruption and could collapse as they are dependent on duty-free and quota-free access to the European market,” he said.
For their part, the African countries, grouped under several bodies, have also expressed reservations.
Central Africa, for instance, has indicated that three countries – Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon – have specific concerns regarding cooperation with the European Union.
Cameroon, which signed the “Stepping Stone” agreement in 2009 as proposed by Europe to safeguard market access to the European Union, but has not yet ratified it, has indicated it would be penalised by having the European market access benefits withdrawn by January 2014.
The decision to withdraw the regulations applies to all countries signatory to interim EPA agreements that have not yet ratified them, ACP officials told IPS.
In the case of Equatorial Guinea, it is faced with financial restrictions on some of the regional projects under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF) for having failed to fully ratify the first revised Cotonou Agreement of June 2005.
Because of an increase in its resources, that country will soon graduate from LDC (least developed country) status to middle income country status, according to U.N. classification, the ACP ministers meeting here was informed.
Gabon, already classified as an “upper-range middle income country”, could see its General System of Preferences (GSP) regime revoked, with Central Africa noting that “in fact the GSP, which is a non-negotiable scheme, continues to be applied at the discretion of the European side”.
The East African Community, which includes countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia, say they have noted “with great concern that our partners seem to be imposing unrealistic deadlines on the conclusions of the negotiation talks and have gone ahead to propose an amendment to EC market access regulations that would deny a group of 18 countries preferential market access to the EU with effect from Jan. 1, 2014 if they have not ratified the EPAs.
“We view this move as not only putting undue pressure on the ongoing EPA negotiation process and therefore the possibility of not concluding an agreement capable of meeting the intended objectives but also an affront to our regional integration,” the EAC added.
The 16 West African countries and those comprising the East South Africa (ESA) grouping have also voiced similar concerns.
The West African countries, which include Ghana and Nigeria, say given the EU’s position of excluding countries that have concluded EPA agreements, but have not yet ratified them, the region must consider “alternative solutions”.
Tuareg and Islamist rebel groups which seized control of northern Mali in March are trying to find common ground for the joint administration of the territory. Residents of the region fear that individual and collective freedoms will not be respected if such an alliance sets up an Islamic state.
Ansar Dine, which is linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) captured the northern part of this West African country in the power vacuum following a March coup.
Abdoul Maïga, director of the Ahmed Baba Centre for Islamic Studies in Timbuktu, one of the main cities under rebel control, says the two groups have widely differing outlooks.
“The MNLA wants to be closer to Europe where it has contacts. In contrast, Ansar Dine is oriented towards the Arab world where it has found support. I don’t know if this support comes from governments or from specific groups, but it’s certain that Ansar Dine’s funding comes from the Middle East, particularly Qatar,” Maïga told IPS over the phone.
An accord between the Islamists and the MNLA was announced on May 26, in which they agreed to merge their armed forces and create an Islamic state in the regions of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal. But five days later, the Tuareg rebels backed out of the agreement, stating their preference for an independent, secular state.
“The failure of the merger announced by Ansar Dine and the MNLA did not surprise me at all,” said Maïga. “The people in the northern regions of Mali – given the choice – will never agree to live in an Islamic state.”
An estimated 90 percent of Malians are Muslim, according to the country’s High Islamic Council. The northern regions, and Timbuktu in particular, have played a historically important role in the spread of Islam throughout West Africa.
“But people don’t understand what is going on now. Here, Islam has never expanded by means of jihad or any other form of violence,” said Maïga.
Negotiations between the rebel factions over the application of shari’a, Islamic law, have continued into June.
Some northern residents see the failure of the merger as proof that shari’a can’t be applied in this region, particularly in cities like Timbuktu, which must preserve their reputation of openness to continue to attract tourists.
“The northerner is by nature a free thinker. Liberty is very important to him, and that’s why 90 percent of the population doesn’t want these people in charge,” Sado Diallo, mayor of Gao, told IPS.
Ansar Dine has begun applying Islamic law in the city, including cutting off thieves’ hands and flogging smokers, according to the mayor – who at the same time lamented the increase of auto theft and other banditry. “Every day I receive SMS messages from people who complain about acts committed by militias,” Diallo said.
Far to the south, in the Malian capital, Bamako, the transitional government says that whether or not the rebels merge is immaterial. Government spokesperson Hamadoun Touré told state radio that the priority for the authorities is to relieve the suffering of residents of the north.
Outside Mali, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union are both worried by the possibility of a well-armed Islamic state being established in the north. During a recent visit to France, the Beninois head of state, Boni Yayi, who is also currently president of the AU, raised the possibility of an intervention by an African military force in Mali, under the aegis of the United Nations.
Mali’s three northern neighbours, Algeria, Niger and Mauritania, are also concerned. Following the unilateral declaration of independence of Azawad on Apr. 6, these countries, who in 2010 set up a joint committee to fight against terrorism and drugs smuggling in the region, met in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, to support ECOWAS initiatives in Mali.
But while waiting for outside help, people in northern Mali have begun to lose patience.
Seydou Cissé, a member of the Peul militia “Ganda Iso”, in the Gao region, told IPS that the population intends to fight.
“All we want from the international community is support for the national army in the form of air strikes against Islamists who seized sophisticated weapons from Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi,” he said.
“We will do the rest to liberate our land,” he said.
(END)
Tuareg and Islamist rebel groups which seized control of northern Mali in March are trying to find common ground for the joint administration of the territory. Residents of the region fear that individual and collective freedoms will not be respected if such an alliance sets up an Islamic state.
With his gold chain, baseball cap, and baggy denim shorts, Junior Toe wears the uniform of Liberia’s urban youth. Spend just a few minutes with the young man and it is evident that he possesses the street smarts to match the look.
However, Toe’s area of expertise lies outside the city and on the farm.
“Look at the pepper seed there,” he says while touring a community farm not far from downtown Monrovia. “Put it in the ground, water it a few times, and you will make some money.”
Toe is the founder and executive director of the Community Youth Network Program (CYNP), which trains young people in agriculture and livestock farming.
“Over there, we have a nursery for cabbages,” he continues. “If you try and grow cabbage in the ground now, the rains will give it a hard time. This is the kind of knowledge we share.”
Food security and meaningful employment for Liberia’s youth have long been major challenges for this West African nation. Now, a number of community-based programmes and government initiatives are working to address both. Officials say they are hopeful that this is the start of a major shift in how young Liberians participate in the agricultural sector.
According to a 2010 report by the United Nations Development Programme, 30 percent of Liberia’s land is arable and close to 90 percent of crop areas receive adequate rain. Yet according to the Liberia Food Security Outlook report for 2012, 60 percent of the population is classified as “food insecure”.
Liberia’s agricultural sector was devastated by decades of mismanagement and war. In 1980, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe seized power in a coup and his rule, which ended 10 years later, was characterised by incompetent policies that hindered development.
In 1989, the country broke out in a civil war that continued sporadically until 2003. Those years saw warlord – and later, president – Charles Taylor plunder the country’s resources and fuel violence that killed 250,000 people. Even greater numbers fled Liberia or were repeatedly displaced.
According to a 2009 assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), between 1987 and 2005 the production of the country’s staple food, rice, fell by 76 percent.
“Agricultural production has increased in recent years as the sector slowly recovers, but yields are still well below the regional average and food insecurity is high,” the document states, adding that Liberia still only produces roughly 40 percent of the rice it needs to feed its almost four million people.
Also affected by the conflict were Liberia’s youth, tens of thousands of whom were coerced into joining rebel factions when they were just boys and girls. Rehabilitation projects run by the U.N. attempted to reintegrate ex-combatants and victims of the war, but those programmes are now widely criticised as failures.
“I went through the disarmament process, through the one week of training,” Toe says, chuckling.
“But many people really never took advantage of that….The men were traumatised; they were used to the gun, used to money, and used to getting what they wanted fast.”
Toe says that after seeing the shortcomings of the rehabilitation programmes, he set out to launch his own, one that would be better suited to Liberia. He reasoned that with fertile soil and a warm and wet climate, agriculture was the way to go. So he founded the CYNP in 2007.
The organisation now has a training centre in Bensonville, Montserrado County (roughly an hour’s drive northeast of Monrovia). In the county, land is divided into eight farms where former trainees and partners manage plots on either their own property or on community land. The Young Farmers Forum keeps participants connected and works to create awareness and attract new recruits.
Crucial to CYNP’s success, and what sets it apart from the U.N.’s past work with ex-combatants, is an emphasis on ownership. “We work with you to develop your own project in your community where you manage it,” Toe says.
According to Toe, there are currently around 100 youths enrolled in six-month long programmes at the Bensonville facility, and as many as 500 graduates are now farming in communities around Montserrado.
A number of those graduates can be found working a plot of unused government land in the Fiamah neighbourhood of Monrovia. Alfred Kapehe says that CYNP helped him progress from subsistence agriculture to smallholder commercial farming. Likewise, James Paylay says the small farm he keeps brings in enough money for him to rent a home, feed his family, and pay his children’s school fees.
“Everything comes from the garden,” Paylay says.
Liberian Deputy Minister for Youth Development Sam Hare acknowledged an often-cited USAID (the U.S. government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance) statistic indicating that just three percent of Liberian youths are interested in farming. But, in an interview with IPS, he maintains that the situation is changing.
“Agriculture has been identified as the key to breaking the youth unemployment challenge,” he says.
“We have been working with the Ministry of Agriculture and other stakeholders to make people see that agriculture, viewed in the right perspective, is a tool for wealth.”
Hare says that the challenge is to convince young people that they can take farming beyond a subsistence level and make a commercial enterprise of it.
“Our vocational training priorities now need to be redefined and restructured to meet the real needs of Liberia. And youth and agriculture should be the focus,” he adds.
Joseph Boiwu, a FAO programme officer for Liberia, says that another impediment slowing youths’ entry into agriculture is the labour-intensive nature of the work. To address this problem the FAO and partners distributed 24 power tillers to small groups of farmers in Bong, Lofa, and Nimba counties in 2010.
“We’re going to now reassess the interest of the youth,” Boiwu says. If the initiative is deemed a success, it could grow to include heavy machinery such as tractors.
Prince Sampson, head of Youth for Development and Progressive Action in Bong County in north-central Liberia, describes a programme his organisation runs that is similar to the CYNP’s. Like Toe, he says that he learned from the mistakes of post-war workshops that failed to make long-term investments in people.
“The ex-combatants had training in carpentry, masonry, and other skills,” Sampson says.
“And then after that, there wasn’t anything substantial for them to do. You had them trained, and then they didn’t have a source of income. So they went back to square one.”
Sampson, who has worked with war-affected youth since 1992, maintains that agriculture is different because there is an element of immediate responsibility.
“The guys…They eat the very rice they grow. The vegetables are sold, the proceeds are divided among them, and they have some cash for their pockets.”
Sampson describes the importance of involving the country’s former combatants in agriculture as a matter of food security.
“We make them understand the usefulness of the years still ahead, in spite of the years that were wasted during the war,” he says.
“We let them understand that the strength they had – their youthful exuberance – can still be harnessed.”
*Additional reporting from Al-Varney Rogers in Monrovia.
(END)
With his gold chain, baseball cap, and baggy denim shorts, Junior Toe wears the uniform of Liberia's urban youth. Spend just a few minutes with the young man and it is evident that he possesses the street smarts to match the look.
When Jose Chiburre was a boy growing up in Mozambique, he would often challenge his friends to a swim across the Incomati River. That was in the 1970s, when the river was 300 metres wide in the dry season: today, the race would be over before it begins.
A transboundary initiative aimed at providing clean drinking water and proper sanitation between Angola and Namibia is making steady progress.
Bupe Bana-Victor has lived in the Mwense district of Luapula Province in northern Zambia all her life. And for her, water talk is synonymous with the Luapula River, which lies just 20 metres from her village and snakes through the entire region before it joins the Lualaba River - a tributary of the mighty Congo, Africa's second-largest river.
On-again, off-again… it's the story of both Malawi's power supply and the interconnection project that could end blackouts with power imported from neighbouring Mozambique.
Twelve-year-old Ahmed* pauses on his crutches in the narrow lane that leads from his house to the main road, glancing at the bullet holes still visible on the walls here in the Abobo Park 18 area of Abidjan. He sighs, then speeds up again to catch the bus that will take him downtown to the Adjamé quarter.
The Southern African Development Community's protocol on shared watercourses is recognised as one of the world's best. But sound agreements on the sustainable and equitable management of joint water resources require effective means to implement them.
When you board Mozambique's national carrier, Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique, you will most likely be given small orange packets of peanuts to munch as the jet whisks you from the country's capital, Maputo, to as far afield as Europe. Sugar, salt or chilli flavour. Take your pick.
The United Nations has warned that despite the austerity measures put in place by South Sudan to deal with its economic woes, humanitarian agencies will have to increase relief efforts in order to keep the country's poor alive as the financial situation worsens.
It is vitally important that governments and civil society organisations start transitioning to a more sustainable global food system in order to achieve lasting development.
As she sits down to watch the 8pm news on TV, Mercy Kamphoni from Chamtulo Village in Malawi's Mangochi lake district looks elated. She still cannot believe that she is the new proud owner of a television set, refrigerator and radio.
South Sudan is losing its forests. And with no unified policy to deal with the situation the government is at odds, with one ministry saying that the loss of forests is a necessity for farming and another warning of the dire environmental consequences if this continues unchecked.
Three years ago, the African Union began a continent-wide campaign to reduce the number of women who die when pregnant or giving birth.
Her neat, bright yellow headscarf matches the rest of her outfit, but contrasts with her weary expression. Sokona Soumounou sits a little apart from the crowd queueing for assistance from the World Food Programme in the southern Mali town of Ségou.
Thousands of people suffered rape, torture and other violence during the post-electoral crisis in Côte d'Ivoire beginning in December 2010. But many survivors of rights violations have been afraid to seek justice for fear of reprisals by the perpetrators. An initiative by the International Federation of Human Rights aims to support 75 such victims as they bring their cases to court.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson says Malian soldiers who overthrew the government on Mar. 22 have neither the right to remain in power nor the strength to deal with humanitarian and security challenges facing the West African country.
In the wake of border tensions the United Nations is airlifting 12,000 southerners from a Sudanese frontier town into South Sudan. But they are returning home in the midst of an economic crisis that has the U.N. warning it may appeal for more funding to scale up humanitarian operations.
At first glance Nortey Quaynor looks like any ordinary 29-year-old Ghanaian. If you spend a little time with him, though, you soon realise that something is different.
Everlyne Wanjiku, a single mother of five, has earned a living selling vegetables in the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, for over three decades. And even though her earnings were meagre, she was able to provide all her children with a tertiary education.
Economic and social growth have become the heart of the development agenda of the bloc of leading emerging economies known as IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) since it began focusing less on politics.
While women constitute the majority of food producers, processors and marketers in Africa, their role in the agricultural sector still remains a minor one because of cultural and social barriers.
While women constitute the majority of food producers, processors and marketers in Africa, their role in the agricultural sector still remains a minor one because of cultural and social barriers.
On a continent of over one billion people, where half the population have mobile phones, the use of mobile communication and internet technologies is crucial to boost development in Africa.
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