RIGHTS-LIBERIA: ‘We Will Use Our Children as Shields’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

By Rebecca Murray

Children play at the Harbel marketplace.

HARBEL, Liberia, Dec 9 (IPS) – “We are not just going to let a bulldozer come in and demolish our land. If possible we will use our children as shields. We will have to do that,” exclaims Eric Lavella, a middle-aged Firestone factory worker living in the heart of Liberia’s largest rubber plantation, 60 kilometres south of the capital Monrovia.

Lavella’s neighbourhood of Firestone contractors, retirees, marketers and squatters — estimated by community leader, Reverend Johnson Flumo, to be around 3,000 — is crowded into breezeblock and corrugated metal shacks haphazardly built in the town of Harbel’s marketplace.

But after more than two decades of selling food, clothing and plastic Chinese goods, the market dwellers’ days are numbered. Firestone intends to shift the vendors to a newly constructed market next month and tear down the old commercial lot. The new location will have over 1000 stalls, but no housing. Both sites are on land Firestone says is theirs until their lease runs out in 2041.
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Popularity: 86% [?]

Q&A: ‘We Have to Develop Our Modern Sharia’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Abderrahim El Ouali interviews MOSTAFA HANNAOUI, founder of the Rights and People project

CASABLANCA, Dec 4 (IPS) – A unique human rights project has been recently set up to empower more than 300 million people in the Arab world to campaign for their individual human rights, according to Mostafa Hannaoui.

Hannaoui, the founder of the Rights and People project, has the vision of providing Arabic-speaking people with the knowledge they need to engage in a region-wide debate on rights issues.

Central to his project will be open access to information about the use of the death penalty in the 24-country region and reporting the day-to-day struggle for the observance of the most fundamental of all rights, the right to life.

IPS: You recently announced the founding of a new abolitionist project called Rights and People. What are you aspiring to achieve?

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Popularity: 19% [?]

RIGHTS-MAURITANIA: ‘Chains Are Jewellery For Men’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Ebrimah Sillah

DAKAR, Dec 3 (IPS) – Mauritania’s security forces are again accused of routine and systematic torture of political opponents and Islamists accused of links with international terrorist groups. A report released by Amnesty International today details cruel violations of human rights, poor prison conditions and a judicial system that offers little protection.

One detainee — accused of membership of a terrorist organisation — told a visiting Amnesty International delegation in February this year how security officers tortured him into coma.

”They forced me to bend double, got hold of my hands and legs, and joined them under the knees at the height of the shin. They tied them together with handcuffs, then placed an iron bar under my knees and suspended me from the ceiling. They then hit me with sticks and truncheons. I regularly lost consciousness in this position.”
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Popularity: 24% [?]

Q&A: ‘Religious Institutions and Islamists Oppose Abolition’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Abderrahim El Ouali interviews BRAHIM AHENSAL of the Moroccan Human Rights Association

CASABLANCA, Dec 1 (IPS) – King Mohamed VI of Morocco could easily abolish the death penalty by royal decree. But by keeping capital punishment on the statute books, the young King is yielding to official religious institutions and Islamists, says Brahim Ahensal.

Ahensal, a member of the Moroccan Human Rights Association, says abolition will depend on the degree of engagement from human rights NGOs and progressive political forces.

Ahensal speaks of the difficulties activists face in their daily battle against capital punishment.

IPS: Once again you marked the World Day against the Death Penalty by holding a sit-in. Is this the only way to express your opposition to the death penalty in Morocco?
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Popularity: 20% [?]

HEALTH-AFRICA: Breaking the Cycle of HIV Transmission

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Zahira Kharsany interviews DAVID ALNWICK, UNICEF HIV Advisor

JOHANNESBURG, Dec 1 (IPS) – According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, early diagnosis and treatment greatly increase survival rates for HIV-positive newborns. but fewer than one in ten infants born to HIV-positive mothers in 2007 was tested for HIV within two months of birth.

”Children and Aids: Third Stocktaking Report 2008”, released by the United Nations Children’s Fund on World AIDS Day, warns that without the right treatment, half of children with HIV will die before their second birthday.

The UNICEF report focuses on what is known as the four ”Ps”. These are the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, providing pediatric treatment and care, preventing infection among adolescents and young people, and protection and care of children affected by AIDS.

UNICEF Regional HIV Advisor for east and southern Africa, David Alnwick, discussed the findings of the report in these key areas with IPS reporter Zahira Kharsany.

IPS: What has the outcome been?

David Alnwick: Progress! Progress has been slow with implementing key priorities, particularly preventing infants born to mothers with HIV from becoming infected themselves. But many countries have done really well in last year or so on this.

In East and Southern Africa — about 30 percent of all pregnant women get an HIV test — and if positive, most get some help to prevent transmission. About half of all health centres provide routine HIV tests to pregnant women. This is far from good enough — but it does represent real progress, a doubling over the last few years, and hopefully it will double again in the next year.

Also there have been new scientific breakthroughs on children who are infected, in spite of efforts to prevent and many countries despite big obstacles are now rolling out ‘early infant diagnosis’, testing kids for the virus at six weeks of age, and putting them on treatment immediately if infected. These are good beginnings, but needs a lot more support.

IPS: What needs to be done?

DA: We need to break the cycle of transmission. We’ve been concentrating on aid prevention in general but especially prevention in women and girls. The report takes stock of countries and we at UNICEF are optimistic that good progress is being made.

But still only one third of all women are tested for HIV. This is not good but it is a lot better then before. It means that countries and governments are taking it seriously. There are optimistic signs that there is progress.

UNICEF has good hopes that effective services for mums already infected will be rapidly scaled up and that children will be protected to maximum extent possible, and where not possible, helped with treatment.

IPS: What concerns are there?

DA: UNICEF is very concerned in East and Southern Africa about the lack of progress with primary prevention of HIV infection, particularly in young women around the time that they become pregnant. This needs much more emphasis, much more radical approaches, much more government support at highest level. We are seeing these signs but much more can be done to prevent HIV infection in girls and women in southern Africa.

Our biggest concern is that even though there has been an increase in prevention from mother-to-child the tap is not being turned off. The infection in women and girls is not lowering. We hope that things will become better with improved medical technologies and government assistant. But we’ve got to do more. It’s not only the job of UNICEF, but all non-governmental organisations, civil society and governments to do more.

IPS: There’s a new emphasis amongst AIDS campaigners on ”knowing your epidemic”, that is to say analysing the local situation in terms of who is infected and what factors are driving the epidemic, and then acting on this information. How does UNICEF view this approach?

DA: Yes – we fully support ‘need to know the epidemic’. The days for generalised approaches are over.

The intriguing thing in southern Africa is that the evidence is clear that it is not just poor or un-educated girls who are infected. In fact women in southern Africa are — according to the World Economic Forum — among the most empowered women on the continent. We need to ask ourselves is, what is happening that young women in Southern Africa have used this relative empowerment, this relative freedom, wealth, mobility, to practice sex lives that are now becoming as risky as men’s sex lives have been for many years, that is several different sex partners at same time for example.

It is not the lack of empowerment that these women and girls are infected. Statistics show that those that are infected are now the educated ones with disposable incomes. The old story of it being those who are poor and live in poverty and have to sell themselves to make some money is not true. It is those who are educated that are becoming infected. I for one believe that we need to look at the process. The most empowered are the ones most at risk. We must ask ourselves why this is so.
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Popularity: 19% [?]

DR CONGO: Peace in a Discriminatory State?

Global Intel Net / IPS

Terna Gyuse interviews ERNEST WAMBA DIA WAMBA, academic and senator

CAPE TOWN, Nov 28 (IPS) – War broke out in the eastern part of DRC again in August since which time 250,000 people have been displaced.

The CNDP headed by Laurent Nkunda has seized large parts of the province of North Kivu, threatening the provincial capital Goma.

In an email interview with IPS, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba — an academic and political theorist with perhaps unique insight and experience into the conflict in Congo as both the former leader of the Rally for Congolese Democracy during the Second Congo War (1998-2003) and as senator in the DRC’s parliament — examines the forces at work in the current crisis.

IPS: Ethnicity is often put forward as the key factor in the conflict in this region. You have a different view: what is the conflict really about?
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Popularity: 21% [?]

TRADE-WEST AFRICA: Swollen Shoot Disease Devastating Cocoa Trees

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Francis Kokutse

ACCRA, Nov 27 (IPS) – On a hot November afternoon, Opanin Owusu Adu showed me around his farm on the outskirts of Suhum, a town in the Eastern Region in Ghana.

He pointed out what has happened to the cocoa trees that he had hoped to make a living from. With a sad voice he said, ‘‘my son, that is what the people say swollen shoot disease does to the cocoa trees”.

What should have been golden pods, have become blackened, dried up and withered. ‘‘You cannot cultivate these ones. It means no money.”

Swollen shoot disease is a problem across the West African region. Farmers in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo and Nigeria have not been spared the devastation.

Worried by its long-term effect, Ghana’s President John Kufuor early this year called on the regional grouping the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to take steps to fight the disease.
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Popularity: 30% [?]

POLITICS-DR CONGO: The Devil You See…

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Analyis by Charles-M. Mushizi

KINSHASA, Nov 26 (IPS) – Few Congolese believe Laurent Nkunda is the man with whom to negotiate peace in North Kivu. The crux of the matter is economics and geopolitics — both greatly influenced by Western interests.

And yet because of the security issues in North Kivu, there seems no way around Nkunda, leader of National Congress for the People’s Defense (CNPD), if peace is to return to the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Ahead of a cabinet reshuffle in Kinshasa last month, then-Minister of National Defense Tshikez Diemu dismissed Nkunda’s declaration of a unilateral ceasefire and call for political negotiations as ”childish babbling”. Tshikez did not make it into the new government.

Since then the CNPD has advanced steadily in North Kivu, displacing tens of thousands more civilians.
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Popularity: 16% [?]

ACTIVE DEFENCE OF INDIAN SHIPPING AGAINST SOMALI PIRACY

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.470

Global Intel Net

B.RAMAN

The policy of the Indian Navy in its operations against Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden area can be characterised as one of active defence of Indian shipping. That means, protection of Indian commercial ships and foreign ships with a large complement of Indian crew transiting through these waters and action in self-defence against pirate boats and ships, which threaten Indian lives and interests and threaten to attack Indian naval ships patrolling the seas in this area. The indications till now are that their role will not be extended to cover active intervention to free already hijacked ships. If preventive measures fail, the responsibility for getting a hijacked ship released from the custody of the pirates will be largely that of the company owning the ship.

2. Any active intervention role will require the presence of more ships with more specially-trained commandos on board. Moreover, if the intervention attempt fails, there could be diplomatic and other complications. It has been reported that the Ministry of Shipping of the Government of India is keen that at least four ships of the Navy should be on anti-piracy patrol. The present policy seems to be to have one ship on rotation on permanent anti-piracy patrol. At the most, this may be increased to two if resources and circumstances permit. Admiral Sureesh Mehta, the Chief of the Naval Staff, told the media on November 20, 2008,that the Navy was also considering the option of an aerial recce of the region. He has also been quoted as saying: “We are considering augmenting our efforts to keep the Indian traffic in the region safe.”
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Popularity: 29% [?]

POLITICS: U.N. Seeks Large Military Force to Restrain Congo

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 20 (IPS) – The 15-member Security Council decided Thursday to bolster the 17,000-strong U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) with an additional 3,000 troops, strengthening further its claim as the largest single peacekeeping force deployed by the United Nations.

But peace activists and human rights organisations remain sceptical whether a larger peacekeeping force is the answer to the crisis in turmoil-stricken African nation.

”The issue here is not the military strength of a peacekeeping force needed in eastern Congo,” the Rev. Gabriel Odima, president of the U.S.-based Africa Centre for Peace & Democracy, told IPS.

”The more relevant issue is why the international community is not addressing the root causes of the conflict in the region,” he said.
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Popularity: 18% [?]

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