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His visit can help African democracy if he curbs a misguided US belief in security by military force
Salim Lone
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 9 July 2009 23.00 BST
Despite the constraints he faced in fulfilling pledges he made as a candidate, Barack Obama has succeeded in offering avenues for co-operation to Cuba, Iran, the Muslim world in general, and now Russia. This weekend, Obama will be in Ghana, and there is intense speculation about what this son of Africa, who electrified the world by so improbably taking the helm in America, will say about what he expects from, and will offer, the continent.
The president’s personal knowledge of and interest in Africa, his charisma and his grassroots support mean that he could be a major player here. This is particularly true since Africa’s low profile among the American political elite allows US leaders a lot of leeway in formulating policy towards it.
But as Obama devises US approaches to African challenges, he will face difficulties from an unexpected quarter – the US military. George Bush and his war on terror, and his reliance on force as a first resort, gave the military extraordinary power in shaping African policy – symbolised by Bush’s creation of the United States Africa Command (Africom), in the misguided notion that the military approach was the best way to tackle terrorism.
For the complete article, please visit:
What Obama can do for us
14:05 GMT, Thursday, 9 July 2009 15:05 UK
The Sri Lankan government has told international relief agencies to cut back their activities in the country.
The government said the decision was taken because there was no more fighting, following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers rebels in May. The International Red Cross (ICRC) says it is closing four offices in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province. But it says an estimated 300,000 displaced people still need food, medicine and help to return home.
An ICRC spokeswoman in Colombo said the latest government decision did not affect its work at the Menik Farm camp complex in the north of the country, where more than 200,000 displaced Tamil civilians are detained.
The Sri Lankan authorities have been under pressure from aid agencies to relax official restrictions on access to camps where internally-displaced people are being held. In the last months of fighting, tensions rose between the ICRC and the government over the fate of civilians. The ICRC spoke at the time of a “humanitarian catastrophe” but the government accused it of spreading panic.
For full article, please visit Sri Lanka orders cuts in aid work
28 Jun 2009 14:22:43 GMT
Source: Reuters
MOGADISHU, June 28, (Reuters) – Somali President Sheik Sharif Ahmed accused hardline Al Shabaab Islamist rebels on Sunday of forcing children to fight in battles to oust his government in the Horn of Africa country.
Al Shabaab is seen as a proxy for al Qaeda in Somalia and includes foreign jihadists. It has carried out executions, floggings and amputations to enforce its authority, mainly in the southern Somali port of Kismayu.
The insurgents control most of southern Somalia and parts of the Horn of Africa nation’s capital, and Western nations fear they could destabilise the region and provide safe havens for hardline Islamists from elsewhere.
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Somali leader says rebels use child soldiers
UNHCR issues recommendations to the Swedish EU Presidency
23 Jun 2009 13:02:15 GMT
Source: UNHCR
UNHCR has published its recommendations to Sweden for its upcoming EU Presidency (July – December 2009), which will be a particularly critical period for the future of EU asylum policy. During the second half of this year, the EU will adopt a new multiannual programme in the area of Justice and Home Affairs which will determine the course of EU law and policy on asylum from 2010 through 2014.UNHCR calls on Sweden to use its Presidency to reassert the importance of a rights-based approach to border management and migration control. Recent events, including Italy’s push-backs of boat people and elections in which anti-immigrant parties scored big gains in a number of EU countries, give rise to concern about Europe’s commitment to ensuring access to protection.
UNHCR supports strengthened solidarity among EU Member States, to assist those facing particular pressures resulting from the arrival of irregular migrants and asylum seekers, and suggests a menu of options in this respect which could include the relocation from one Member State to another of persons recognized as refugees. But UNHCR points out that this should not be at the expense of solidarity with non-EU countries hosting large refugee populations.
The Power of the Market Women
In the catalogue of global conflict and suffering, the Republic of Liberia on Africa’s west coast is but another example of the horrors of civil war, displacement and brutality on this vast continent. During the hegemony of Dr. Charles Taylor, civil war waged relentlessly from 1999 through 2003, decimating families, displacing communities and laying waste the children of the republic. Girls and young women were commonly raped, boys as young as seven years old, conscripted to fight the dirty grab for power. The slaughter was a fact of daily life.
Enter, one woman with a loud voice. Leymah Gbowee, a single mother decided that enough was enough. Amidst the chaos, she galvanized the mothers and grandmothers, aunts and sisters, first at her church, St. Lutheren Church in Monrovia, then to other churches in her community, Christian and Muslim. Dressed in white traditional head wraps and clothing, the women marched in the name of peace as their numbers grew. Referred to as, “the market women” a Liberian term used to describe the women who sold goods in the marketplace, they became a movement that changed the course of history in their country and eventually resulted in a landslide vote for Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected woman president.
Leymah Gbowee’s courage, strength and resolve became the inspiration for the 2008 documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, a film produced by Abigail Disney, founder of the Daphne Foundation. The film has won international acclaim, and Leymah Gbowee recently became the 2009 recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage award, as well as the Blue Ribbon for Peace by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is currently building Women, Peace and Security Africa, a women’s peace building organization in Ghana that will act to build relationships across the West African Sub region in support of women’s capacity to prevent, avert and end conflicts. As Leymah so succinctly stated, “We, as mothers, are the ones who can change everything. “
To read more, please click
http://www.praythedevilbacktohell.com/v2/.
Source: http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2008/11/inf/GboweeLeymah.htm
19 Jun 2009 12:06:00 GMT
Written by: Emma Batha
This is an edited transcript of an interview with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres
How many people are displaced in the world?
We had 42 million at the end of 2008 and very probably we will be getting closer to 45 million at the present moment. The Pakistan displacement crisis is probably the biggest since events in Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo in the 90s. What we’re witnessing now is indeed, if not an unprecedented crisis, one of the most dramatic in recent times. But more important in my opinion than the total number … is the recognition that in many situations displacement is becoming protracted … and at the same time the fact that 80 percent of the world’s refugees and the overwhelming majority of those internally displaced are in the developing world.
When one sees sometimes the nature of the debate in several developed countries about asylum, and how some politicians and some media become very outspoken when they face a few thousands people coming, it’s important to say that countries like Pakistan now have 1.8 million Afghan refugees. A country like Iran has almost 1 million Afghan refugees. Syria and Jordan together might have almost 1.5 million Iraqis and Tanzania might have more than 500,000 people. All these countries are in the developing world.
Those that debate asylum, migration and people on the move in the developed world should meditate a little bit before launching into xenophobic reaction trying to limit the right to seek asylum.
To read in full, please visit:
19 Jun 2009 19:10:00 GMT
Source: Church World Service
Website: http://www.churchworldservice.org
June 19, 2009 MONROVIA,
Liberia — As nations in West Africa continue attempts to achieve lasting peace and prosperity after decades of conflict the Reverend John L. McCullough has issued a call for honest talk about the issues — poverty, hunger, corruption, conflict, dislocation — that have resulted in so many affronts to the dignity of people living in the struggling region.
McCullough, executive director and CEO of humanitarian agency Church World Service, spoke on June 15 in Monrovia, Liberia, to West African church leaders and government officials attending a week-long conference, “Climate Change, Human Rights, Peace and Security.” He drew upon the biblical story of Ruth and Naomi, saying, “Their story is of a people dispossessed — first because of the drought, followed by poverty and finally famine. It is a story with which most of the people whom God has called you to love, and under your care, can identify.”
A significant contributor to the misery in the region is climate change, which has caused extreme weather, failed crops, forced relocation, and the resulting poverty.
Via http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/284081/124543881555.htm?=amp&_lite_=1
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