Regional leaders meeting in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, on May 3 appeared to slightly retreat from their positions against coup leaders in Guinea-Bissau and Mali, but the Economic Community of West African States continues to press for a speedy return to constitutional rule in both countries.

The Ivorian president, Alassane Ouattara, who is also the current head of ECOWAS, said “The seriousness of events in Mali and the rejection of our resolutions by the junta have slowed the momentum of implementation of our decisions.”

His remarks came as the country’s military junta rejected the regional organisation’s plan to deploy troops to the West African country – this despite the continued control of the north by Tuareg rebels and Islamist forces, and an Apr. 30 outbreak of fighting between rival groups of soldiers in the capital, Bamako, that lasted for three days.

Heads of state at the Dakar summit also had to respond to the rejection by the Guinea-Bissau military of key details of a proposed interim administration for that country.

A revised plan from ECOWAS calls for Guinea-Bissau’s parliament to extend its term, with a newly-elected speaker of the house assuming the role of interim president for a one-year transitional period.

“Neither the interim president nor the transitional prime minister may stand as candidates in the eventual presidential election,” stressed Kadré Désiré Ouédraogo, the president of the ECOWAS Commission. “Appropriate mechanisms will be found to extend the mandate of the current parliament to cover the transition period.”

Analysts say the new resolution appears to show a softening of ECOWAS’s position on Guinea-Bissau. The regional organisation initially wanted Raimundo Pereira – a member of the dominant African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and interim president at the time of the coup – to head a transitional government, but this was rejected by the coup’s leaders in Bissau.

Ouédraogo added that the ECOWAS Standby Force will be deployed to Guinea-Bissau to supervise the withdrawal of the Angolan Technical Assistance Mission, ensure security during the transitional period, and support reforms of the defence and security forces.

The PAIGC, whose candidate was poised to win a second round of presidential elections before the Apr. 12 coup intervened, has since condemned the new plan. “Our party … will not take part in any transition government and we reiterate our position taken since the coup, which is that Raimundo Pereira and Carlos Gomes (prime minister at the time of the coup) be returned to their respective posts,” said PAIGC secretary general Rui Dia Sousa.

The summit instructed the ECOWAS Commission to seek assistance from the African Union, the United Nations and the wider international community to implement these initiatives in Guinea-Bissau, he concluded.

Turning to the Malian crisis, the Dakar summit called on transitional authorities there to accelerate the elaboration of a roadmap for a return to constitutional rule, including a clear timeline for legislative, organisational and operational activity leading up to the holding of presidential elections in Mali.

“The Summit repeats that any person who obstructs the proper functioning of institutions of the Republic will be subject to targeted sanctions,” stressed Ouédraogo.

West African heads of state also made a fresh call to Mali’s armed forces to devote themselves to the protection of the country’s people and its territorial integrity, and to refrain from any acts likely to disturb the transition process. ECOWAS added that it would only send troops to Mali at the request of the interim authorities.

Here too, analysts note that ECOWAS has reconsidered decisions taken at an earlier special summit (in Abidjan on Apr. 26) when it committed to sending an armed force to Mali. The junta in Bamako rejected this out of hand, arguing that it would violate the country’s sovereignty.

At a May 2 press conference, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for West Africa, Saïd Djinnit, warned of the serious threat posed by the instability in Mali.

“The situation, particularly in the north, constitutes first of all a serious threat to Mali, but also to the whole of West Africa and globally,” he said.

“(The United Nations) will support all sub-regional initiatives to fight against terrorists present in northern Mali,” said Djinnit.

At the opening of the summit in Dakar a day later, Senegalese President Macky Sall called for all parties to persevere along a path of dialogue, adding that, “(ECOWAS seeks) to eradicate the seeds of destabilisation which, in the end, will not spare any country in the region.”

Despite the intense focus on Mali and Guinea-Bissau over the past month, Ouattara urged leaders to remain focused on development in the region.

“The management of political crises like the ones we have had to deal with at these summits must leave space for the other objectives of our regional organisation, including the construction of roads, schools, and hospitals, and improving living conditions for people and especially youth employment.”

Political scientist Massaer Diallo, the president of the Institute for Political and Strategic Studies in Dakar, said, “The final resolution from ECOWAS shows there is still a reluctance to respect democracy. Constitutional rule must be re-established in Guinea-Bissau, and it is also fundamental in the case of Mali.”

“Despite all the negotiations that can take place at the international level, the question of Mali’s territorial integrity is non-negotiable, and it calls for the entire international community to restore it.”

It was tough for Hassan Toure to decide to stay in his small town on the outskirts of Kidal, in northern Mali. The government troops had withdrawn on Mar. 30, and several armed groups, including militias and bandits, were operating in the region.

Child combatants had been seen in the ranks of the Tuareg rebels in Mali. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

“I wanted to leave for my children’s sake,” says Toure, speaking over the phone to IPS, and withholding his real name because he fears reprisals. “But my shop is the only thing I own, and I couldn’t let it be looted and destroyed by the thugs.”

Toure regrets the decision now.

He says that he tried to prevent his children from going outside at all, “but they’re at that age.” On Mar. 29, he says, his eldest son, 15, never came home, and is still missing.

“Other kids in the neighbourhood say he went with some armed men,” says Toure. “I cannot sleep. I am so worried about what might happen to him with those men.”

While Toure’s story, like most reports from the north of Mali, is difficult to confirm, his fears could be very real.

According to Corinne Dufka, a senior West Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW) who conducted a 10-day fact- finding mission to Mali in April, all the witnesses her organisation interviewed had reported seeing child soldiers in the rebel ranks.

Child combatants had been seen in the ranks of the Tuareg rebels, namely the Movement for the National Liberation of Azawaad (MNLA).

According to a HRW report titled “Mali – War Crimes by Northern Rebels”, released on Apr. 30, “many (children) were described as carrying military assault rifles and wearing fatigues that some people said were falling off their bodies.”

“The presence of children within the ranks of armed groups in northern Mali is a very disturbing development,” says Dufka.

“Commanders of these groups should immediately cease their recruitment of anyone under 18, release all the children from their forces, and work with child protection agencies to return them to their homes where they belong.”

Witnesses told HRW that child combatants appeared to be between 15 and 17 years old; however, some appeared to be as young as 12. Teachers from the region also told HRW that they recognised some of their students in the MNLA’s ranks.

Tuareg rebels, under several different names, have been fighting against the Malian state since its independence in 1960. Due to the political instability in Bamako where a Mar. 22 coup d’état toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré, and an influx of weapons from Libya, the rebels managed to sweep across the north of Mali and announce a new state, Azawad, on Apr. 6.

This may have been slightly premature. Reports suggest that they are far from being in control of the situation and are competing with several Islamist groups in the region.

One group, Ansar Dine, led by former Tuareg rebel leader Iyad Ag Ghali, has expressed his group’s desire to apply Sharia law in the region. Ansar Dine does not want independence, but rather to establish an Islamic state.

Witnesses told HRW that they have seen fewer child soldiers in their ranks, but were concerned about Ansar Dine’s new wave of recruitment in the northern Malian regions of Gao, Dire and Niafounke in mid-April. It is reported that children have already been recruited and trained by Ansar Dine in camps outside of Gao.

Adding to concerns about the future of northern Mali are growing reports of foreign Islamist groups increasingly operating in the region. While they have long had a presence in the region, it is only recently they have been able to take advantage of the power vacuum and openly move around.

According to reports, the Nigerian Islamist group, Boko Haram, as well the regional Al-Qaeda group, the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, and its offshoot, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), are all currently present in the north of Mali. They are also reported to be using child soldiers.

On Apr. 6, armed men stormed the Algerian consulate in Gao, kidnapping the consul and six staff members. According to an MNLA source, Boko Haram and MUJAO members had kidnapped them.

When the MNLA tried to rescue the diplomats, the joint Boko Haram-MUJAO force sent five young boys aged between 10 to12, with explosives strapped to their chests, to deter them.

The source says that the MNLA were told that if they did not leave, the young boys would blow everyone up. In response, the MNLA withdrew.

In addition to the inclusion of children in rebel ranks, HRW has reported numerous incidents of young girls being abducted and sexually abused. Witnesses say the MNLA has been taking girls as young as 12 to abandoned buildings and repeatedly raping them over the course of several days.

“We’re very concerned about what appears to be a drastic increase in the targeting and sexual abuse of women and girls by armed groups in the north,” says Dufka.

The vulnerability of women in the north is increased by the lack of medical care, non-existent rule of law, and limited humanitarian assistance.

The United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that since January 2012, at least 284,000 people have fled their homes as a result of the armed conflict in the north. Of this number, about 107,000 are believed to be internally displaced, while the rest have fled to neighbouring countries, notably Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Mauritania.

Civil society groups are calling on the United Nations peacekeeping mission to withdraw support from a disarmament programme they say could spark further violence in South Sudan’s volatile Jonglei state.

Members of the Murle group displaced by ethnic violence await food distribution in Gumuruk, Pibor county, in South Sudan's Jonglie state. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

Jonglei has long been plagued by ethnic tensions and cattle raids made exceptionally deadly because of the easy availability of arms left over from a two-decade civil war that ended in 2005. With an aim to quell violence, the government on Mar. 12 launched a disarmament campaign – first by asking civilians to turn over weapons voluntarily, and as of May 1, enforcing the order.

Now, a coalition of civil society groups has released a report documenting alleged abuses during the voluntary phase of the campaign, which it says received logistical support from the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). The groups warn that violence could escalate now that the government has moved into the enforcement phase.

Incidents documented in the Apr. 30 report, titled Perpetuating Cycles of Violence, include: tying young men to trees and beating them, simulated drowning, and an armed clashbetween the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and members of the ethnic Lou Nuer community who resisted disarmament. That clash resulted in both civilian and SPLA casualties.

“UNMISS is providing material support for a violent, abusive process that weakens support for the state and continues the cycle of violence in Jonglei,” said the report, which was released bythe civil society groups Pact, Community Empowerment for Progress, Standard Action Liaison Focus, Serving and Learning Together and the South Sudan Law Society.

UNMISS denied giving “direct support” to the campaign, which has been carried out by the SPLA. The mission’s assistance has beenlimited to transporting officials throughout the state “to sensitise the population about civilian disarmament process,” Josephine Guerrero, a spokeswoman for the mission, told IPS May 1.

“As UNMISS has not provided any civilian or military contributions to the process, there is also nothing to ‘withdraw’,” she added.

But one of the report’s authors, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, argued that transporting government officials by helicopter constitutes support for the campaign. The author added that UNMISS endorsed the voluntary campaign in a Mar. 12 press release.

Guerrero said UNMISS monitoring teams have reported human rights violations tothe government.

South Sudan’s government spokesman, BarnabaMarial Benjamin, denied that abuses have taken place. “There is no violence up to now,” he told IPS in Juba on May 1. “There’s no resistance anywhere. You may get a few people hiding guns somewhere, but it is going well.”

Medecins Sans Frontiers provided IPS with the number of patients it treated for injuries related to the disarmament campaign. The organisation said it has treated 30 people so far, two of whom died due to their injuries. While most sustained injuries from beatings, at least three had gunshot wounds.

The South Sudanese government launched its disarmament campaign in the wake of attacks on ethnic Murlecommunities by members of the Lou Nuer ethnic group. The assault followed a year of clashes between the groups that killed at least 1,000 peoplefrom both sides, according to the U.N.

In the weeks running up to the attacks,UNMISS air patrols reported that as many as 8,000 Lou Nuer youth were marching toward Murle communities in Pibor county, which is about 273 kilometers from Juba. Despite advanced warning, the government said it was unable to deploy enough troops to stave off the assault. Government officials blamed logistical problems. Much of Jonglei, a state roughly the size of England, is inaccessible by road. And many of the existing roads become impassable when it rains.

The U.N. said the violence affected 160,000 people, many of whom are still displaced and reliant on food aid. The Pibor county commissioner claimed about 3,000 people were killed during attacks against the Murle in Pibor county. Both the government and the U.N. dismissed that figure, but have failed to provide their own estimate despite repeated requests from journalists.

UNMISS investigated the violence,andHilde Johnson, the U.N. secretary general’s special representative for South Sudan, told reporters on Mar. 6 that the UNMISS report would be made public within weeks. But two months after her statement, and four months after the attacks, UNMISS has yet to release its findings.

“UNMISS is finalising a comprehensive report on the violence in Jonglei, which will be shared with the government once it is completed,” said Guerrero, the mission’s spokeswoman. “It will of course be available to the public.”

The Perpetuating Cycles of Violence report notes that disarmament programmes have been carried out in Jonglei at least five times in the past six years without success.

Not only have such campaigns failed to rid the state of weapons, but they have been marked by beatings, torture and the killing of civilians, according to previous reports. During a 2006 campaign that collected 3,000 weapons, for example, the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey calculated one death for every two weapons seized.

The authors of Perpetuating Cycles of Violence argue that the proper conditions must be in place before civilians will feel secure enough to hand over their weapons voluntarily. These include strengthening the policing and justice systems, addressing political grievances, promoting peace and reconciliation between ethnic groups, and providing basic services such as education and health care.

Until those conditions are met, both the government and UNMISS should halt the current campaign, which is likely to result in increased violence as it moves into its enforcement phase, the report said. “Far from being an answer to insecurity in Jonglei, disarmament is a part of the cycle of violence that has plagued the state.”

Since January, various groups of Tuareg rebels in Mali have come together in an attempt to administer a new northern state called Azawad.

Malian rebels do not have the support of most ethnic groups in the north of the country. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

While this was announced on Apr. 6, the rebel grouping’s control of the region remains questionable, and the roots behind the conflict, complex.

After the colonial French departed in 1960, the region was carved up and the Tuareg nomadic communities were placed into several different countries.

According to Professor Jeremy Keenan, the French felt close to the Tuareg and not the southern ethnicities in Mali, due to their matriarchal society, similar class structures, monogamous nature and a romantic notion that the French had of the Taureg people.

“The French patronised them, it made certain Tuareg clans feel superior,” says Keenan.

When Mali gained independence, Tuareg communities in the north suddenly found themselves under the rule of the southern tribes, whom some Tuareg clans believed to be inferior.

“Their world was turned upside down and they didn’t like it,” explains Keenan. “They felt as though they had done pretty badly out of the colonial shift.”

Unhappy with the new setup, a handful of Tuareg led a small rebellion in 1963. This started when Alladi Ag Alla, a Tuareg rebel, attacked two policemen as they travelled on camel across a remote desert.

The Malian army responded, crushing the rebellion within a year. Soon afterwards, severe drought hit the region from 1969 to 1974 and from 1982 to 1984, and forced thousands of Tuareg to flee to neighbouring countries in search of work and food.

But in 1990, hundreds of Tuaregs returned under the leadership of Iyad Ag Ghali, now the leader of the Islamist faction, Ansar Dine, which is currently calling for Sharia law to be implemented in Mali.

After an initial attack on a small police camp, conflict raged until 1992 when the rebels entered into talks with the Malian government.

The resultant National Pact, which was signed in 1992, fractured the movement. While some Tuareg leaders were keen to negotiate with the government, others took a hard-line approach. Those who disapproved of their comrades’ desire to compromise fled to neighbouring countries. And most of the rebel leaders who remained were given special positions in the state military.

Despite peace agreements, rebels said that the Malian government did not fulfil their promises and anger simmered away. This was until 2006 when a new rebellion broke out after insurgents attacked Malian army installations, only to stop again after ceasefire talks brokered by Algeria.

The result of the talks, the Algiers Accords, promised the Tuareg rebels greater autonomy, economic development, and the protection of Tuareg culture. But the agreement broke down again.

However, one Tuareg rebel leader, Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, refused to negotiate. When the Algiers Accords were being worked out, he was still attacking the Malian army. But in 2009, he was finally pushed out of Mali and found refuge in Libya.

There he teamed up with several former revolutionary commanders who had left Mali after the 1990 rebellion. They included Mohammed Ag Najim, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad’s (MNLA) current chief of staff. Once again plans began, to launch another rebellion, one that would be stronger than ever before.

As anti-Muammar Gaddafi protests began in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, Ag Bahanga made plans to travel back to Mali with a handful of leaders to restart their rebellion.

The group returned to Mali in October 2011, and was followed by hundreds of Tuareg mercenaries, who were once hired by both Gaddafi and the Libyan National Transitional Council, and who were armed with stolen Libyan weapons. This was the beginning of the latest conflict.

According to MNLA spokesman Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, few of his people were loyal to Gaddafi, and they never forgot the atrocities committed against the Tuareg people in Mali.

“We would attack a police force and they would respond by attacking any Tuareg they could find,” explains Acharatoumane.

The most notable perpetrators of war crimes were members of Ganda Koy, a Songhai militia funded by the Malian army, which allegedly committed several massacres against unarmed Tuareg civilians.

While some MNLA commanders do have grounds for complaint against the Malian government, and genuine dreams for the creation of a Tuareg state, observers are sceptical of how much public support they have in the region. They are also not convinced that the concept of Tuareg nationalism is embraced by all.

According to West Africa expert Tommy Miles, the MNLA do not have the support of most ethnic groups in the north, who see the rhetoric of the movement as another way for noble Tuaregs to dominate their communities.

Milesargues rather than being a national liberation struggle, “northern Mali now looks like the locus of an armed political struggle between rival local Tuareg leaders, which has cascaded into a general collapse of the social order.”

Miles explains this by pointing to the dominance of the Ifghoas clan members in the rebellions. Few other Tuareg clans are interested in the desire for an independent state.

According to Keenan, in order to understand the true reasons motivating the Islamist groups operating in the north, one has to look at their links with the Algerian regime and the drug trade.

“These are the two elephants in the room,” explains Keenan. “Algeria’s secret service, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), has operatives in all these groups in the region.”

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, through proxy drug smugglers, make vast amounts of money out of the drug trade. Like many other groups in the region, they have a major vested interest to be in the north of Mali, where they can control the transportation of cocaine.

“In addition to several other agendas, the DRS wants to keep instability in the region in order to secure the drug trade,” Keenan says, adding that the DRS is also trying to keep the Islamist groups off Algerian soil and in the north of Mali where they can use operatives to control the situation.

Several anti-MNLA groups are emerging and there is a growth in the number of foreign Islamist groups operating in the region. As the conflict becomes increasingly complex and fractured, the MNLA’s history of grievances becomes more distant. As clans, factions and Islamist groups take up guns for their own interests, the region edges closer to all-out civil war.

As thousands of people flee the conflict in South Sudan’s northern border states, increasing numbers have also been forced to leave their homes and towns in search of affordable food.

The conflict in South Sudan has more than doubled the price of basic commodities, making it difficult for many here to afford. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

As tension between South Sudan and Sudan continues in the South Sudanese northern areas of Unity, Upper Nile, Northern and Western Bahr al Ghazal states, the conflict has more than doubled the price of basic commodities, making it difficult for many here to afford.

In the border town of Bentiu, the price of a 50-kilogramme sack of sorghum has increased from 10 dollars to 24, while a kilogramme of sugar has tripled from one to three dollars.

“A 20 litre jerry can of cooking oil rose from 20 to 40 dollars in the last two weeks,” said Simon Kenyi, a teacher in Bentiu.

“Traders who used to bring in these goods from Elobeid in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state are unable to do so now because the border is closed,” he added.

For the last month, traders who usually import foodstuffs from Southern Kordofan in Sudan have been victims of violence along the route to South Sudan. Many have stopped trying to cross the border altogether.

The rapid increase in prices of consumer goods has forced residents of Bentiu, which is the capital of Unity state, to flee to towns in South Sudan’s greater Equatoria region, where consumer goods imported from East Africa are in abundance and relatively cheaper. The southern states of Western, Central and Eastern Equatoria share borders with the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia.

“Many people here are moving their families to Juba and Yei, in Central Equatoria state, because they can no longer afford food,” Bonifacio Taban, a local journalist in Bentiu, said.

Fighting between South Sudan and Sudan took a turn on Apr. 10 when South Sudan occupied the disputed oil-producing town of Heglig, in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state. Both countries have laid claim to the town, which lies in a border area.

According to South Sudan’s Minister of Information Barnaba Marial Benjamin, the country occupied Heglig to stop Sudan’s military, the Sudan People’s Armed Forces or SAF, from continuing to launch ground and air attacks from the area.

The South Sudanese army, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), were ready to withdraw provided that international monitors were sent to Heglig and Sudan agreed to international arbitration to determine which country owns the area, he had said at the time.

However, after South Sudan’s withdrawal on Apr. 23, the country says that Sudan has continued attacks.

Unity State Governor Taban Deng Guy said this week that 75 people had died in aerial bombardments in his state in the last few months; it includes casualties in Bentiu town and other parts of the state.

In the same state, thousands of civilians have been displaced following ground clashes between the SPLA and the SAF, and aerial bombardments by the latter.

South Sudan’s Deputy Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Preparedness Sabrina Dario Okolong said that residents of Unity state are fleeing the aerial bombardments in the northern part of the state and were making their way south to Nhiakdiu, Mayendit, Leer, Koch and Guit counties in search of safety.

“We also have about 1,500 people who have been displaced from Pariang County (a county in Unity state that borders Heglig) and we have the United Nations agencies verifying 1,693 IDPs in Pariang and 303 IDPs in Panyang,” Okolong said. Panyang is an administrative unit comprised of a number of villages within Pariang County.

An aid worker, who did not want to be named, estimated that 5,000 to 10,000 people had become internally displaced in the state.

The death toll from the conflict is not known, however, the U.N. says after South Sudan withdrew from Heglig, 16 civilians were killed in air raids and ground attacks within Unity state alone.

Dozens of foreign traders from Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Ethiopia and Eritrea are fleeing Bentiu where, on Apr. 23, SAF warplanes bombed a market and a bridge killing four people and wounding four others.

Makosa Kabanga, a Congolese trader who arrived in Juba from Bentiu on Apr. 24, said he was scared to stay in Bentiu because of the air raids.

“We were five Congolese who left Bentiu for Juba late last week. We feared the fighting in Heglig. Although Bentiu was a bit far from it, it was too much for us,” he told IPS. “We feared that there was going to be bombing in Bentiu and that’s what happened after we left. We will only return to Bentiu when the fighting and bombing stops,” he said.

But in South Sudan’s capital city of Juba some commodities are not so easy to find. Fuel stations have run out of petrol and there are long queues of motorbikes and cars as people wait their turn to purchase the commodity, which has almost doubled in price since the fighting intensified.

“We used to buy a litre of petrol at one dollar but now it costs more than three dollars,” Moses Taban, a motorcycle taxi operator, said.

An oil dealer in Juba, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, said he believed that there is a shortage of petrol because the SPLA purchase large quantities of fuel from him recently.

“The SPLA bought hundreds of thousands of litres from us. It takes time to bring in more fuel from Kenya… that is why you are seeing a shortage,” he said.

Rebel leaders in Guinea-Bissau have released the country’s prime minister and interim president, who were arrested in the country’s Apr. 12 coup, and have flown them to Côte d’Ivoire.

The release of Carlos Gomes Junior and Raimundo Pereira is an encouraging response by the junta to demands by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS ) for the immediate restoration of constitutional rule.

ECOWAS has given Guinea-Bissau’s military junta 72 hours until Apr. 29 to restore constitutional order, and decided to send a contingent of at least 500 soldiers to the country, which has been in crisis since the coup d’état.

“We can’t tolerate this usurpation of power by the junta in Guinea-Bissau any longer,” Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara, the current head of ECOWAS, declared during an extraordinary summit held in Abidjan on Apr. 26, adding that the coup leaders must must step down and allow a transition process to be put in place quickly.

At the conclusion of the summit, ECOWAS warned that if the junta in Bissau did not accede to its demands, the regional body would immediately impose sanctions on members of the military command and their associates.

ECOWAS further threatened to take diplomatic, economic and financial sanctions against Guinea-Bissau without excluding the possibility of referring cases for prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

West African heads of state also decided to send troops to both Guinea-Bissau and Mali.

“The force to be deployed in Mali will assist the transitional bodies and the interim government to respond to any eventuality should the use of force be needed to restore the territorial integrity of Mali,” the president of the ECOWAS Commission, Désiré Kadré Ouédraogo, said at a press conference.

Ouédraogo said negotiations are ongoing with the Tuareg rebels who control the northern part of Mali, and the contingent initially being dispatched to Mali will be charged with maintaining peace and security for a one-year transitional period which is expected to end with elections.

But should talks with the northern rebels fail, he added, the mission could be reinforced with combat units.

Mali’s interim leader, Dioncounda Traoré, took part in the summit, with the Mauritanian president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, also present – Mauritania is not a member of ECOWAS, but was specially invited as it shares a border with Mali.

The leaders of the coup in Guinea-Bissau have reportedly agreed to the deployment of a contingent of 500 to 600 soldiers to the country under ECOWAS’s authority. This force will have the task of facilitating the withdrawal of the Technical and Military Assistance Mission from Angola to Guinea-Bissau, assisting with the reform of the country’s army, and helping to maintain security during a transition programme that is to be put in place.

Troops for this force will be provided by Nigeria, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, under the command of Colonel-Major Barro Gnibanga, from Burkina Faso.

The summit of heads of state also established a regional contact group with the mandate of coordinating implementation and monitoring of ECOWAS decisions on Guinea-Bissau. This group will include Benin, Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea, Senegal and Togo, with Nigeria acting as head.

“ECOWAS is trying to maintain a firm line in managing these two cases. There has been a slight backtracking on the situation in Mali, because regional leaders have recognised that what’s going on in the north is more complicated than they had imagined,” Abidjan-based political scientist Barthélémy Kodja, told IPS.

“While in Guinea-Bissau the framework is well-defined and easy to manage with the deployment of a military force, Mali’s situation calls for major human, material, and financial resources,” he said.

“At the beginning, the feeling was that ECOWAS would get involved militarily in Mali to fight the Tuareg rebels and other armed groups,” Kodja said. “Regional leaders, especially the current ECOWAS head Alassane Ouattara, showed some willingness to engage in this way, but it was wise to review these plans because getting bogged down (in conflict there) was going to cause serious problems throughout the entire sub-region, and even beyond its borders.”

The coup in Mali took place on Mar. 22, since which time Tuareg rebels and armed Islamist groups have seized control of the northern part of the country. The president overthrown by the coup, Amadou Toumani Touré, agreed to resign and allow the installation of a transitional government directed by the president of the National Assembly, Dioncounda Traoré. Cheick Modibo Diarra was named prime minister of this transitional administration on Apr. 17, and he last week formed a unity government.

Guinea-Bissau’s coup occurred on Apr. 12, as the country was awaiting the second round of presidential elections planned for the end of April. Soldiers fired on the residence of the prime minster, Carlos Gomes Junior, subsequently arresting him and the country’s interim president, Raimundo Pereira.

Saffa Momoh Lahai was just two years old when his father was killed during Sierra Leone’s civil war. Rebels attacked their family home in Kailahun District, in the eastern reaches of the country, and shot Lahai’s father when he tried to resist.

Saffa Momoh Lahai lost his father in Sierra Leone’s civil war and said justice prevailed when former Liberian President Charles Taylor was convicted. Credit: Mustapha Dumbuya/IPS

More than a decade later, Lahai went to the local seat of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown to hear the verdict read out in the trial of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia (1997-2003) who was convicted on Thursday Apr. 26 of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sierra Leone.

The verdict, which was read out by Judge Richard Lussick from The Hague, was televised live across Sierra Leone.

“I am so happy that Taylor has been found guilty,” Lahai told IPS after hearing the verdict, which was handed down in The Hague.

“It cannot bring back my dead father, but it feels good that justice has now prevailed over injustice and evil, and that makes me very happy.”

Many victims of the war in Sierra Leone were quietly pleased with the ruling, though the response was muted. Thousands across this West African country sat glued to TV sets or transistor radios to hear the court’s findings. Most simply went back to their daily lives after the verdict was read.

Haja Bintu Mansaray’s husband was killed by rebels in Koinadugu District, northern Sierra Leone, right in front of her.

“This verdict cannot bring back my husband, but my children and I can take solace from it,” said Mansaray, who added that she would never forget seeing her husband murdered.

Like many Sierra Leoneans, she said she has struggled to survive since the war, finding it difficult to pay her children’s school fees. While the conflict ended in 2002, the country has remained near the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index, and much of the damage done is yet to be repaired.

Taylor was convicted of supporting the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel faction led by Foday Sankoh, which invaded the east of the country in 1991. The RUF unleashed 11 years of suffering on the civilian population, with mass amputations, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers characterising its campaigns. The RUF sought control of the rich alluvial diamond fields in the eastern part of Sierra Leone.

In Kono District, one of the longest-suffering regions during the war, survivors said they were happy with the guilty verdict, but were anxious to know what the sentence would be.

“I would give him a slow agony of a death, because he was the one responsible for the amputations, the killings, the destruction of lives and property,” said Eric Kellie, in Kono’s capital town of Koidu.

Kellie’s brother and mother were killed during the war, and his home was destroyed. More than a decade later, he is still trying to pick up the pieces.

“It has been very difficult for a long time,” said Kellie.

An estimated 50,000 people were killed during the war, with thousands more raped or suffering amputations. And since the war’s end, Sierra Leone has seen far less international support than neighbouring Liberia, which suffered a 14-year war after Taylor invaded the country with a small rebel faction in 1989. Taylor has not been indicted for any of the atrocities committed during the Liberian war.

Eldred Collins, the former RUF spokesman and current spokesman for the political party of the same name, said that Taylor was not to blame for the war, which he attributed instead to Sierra Leone’s long history of corrupt and unjust governance. In order to prevent another conflict, those conditions need to change, said Collins.

Abdul Rahim Kamara, director of Manifesto 99, a human rights organisation following the special court, said the trial had “sent out a loud and clear message, not only to Sierra Leone but to the whole continent: that the days of impunity are over.”

“This should be a warning to all sitting officials that one day they will be held accountable for what they do,” said Kamara.

In Freetown, Alhaji Jusu Jakka, the director of the War Amputees Victims’ Association, said he was “happy” and “relieved” after the verdict. But he pointed out that the Taylor trial cost a great deal when little has been done for the victims of the war. The trial reportedly cost 50 million dollars.

“The international community has spent more money on perpetrators, rather than victims, who suffered the atrocities perpetrated by these people,” said Jakka.

He said the judgment was a victory for victims, but he expected more reparations.

The verdict represents the first time a head of state has been found guilty of war crimes since the end of the Second World War. Taylor is the first former African head of state to be tried for crimes against humanity, and the case has been hailed as an end of impunity for African despots.

A sentence is expected on May 16. Taylor’s lawyers have said they will appeal.

*Additional reporting by Jessica McDiarmid in Kono District, Sierra Leone.

When the verdict against Liberia’s former President Charles Taylor for war crimes in Sierra Leone is handed down on Thursday, it will be of no help to the many former combatants of the country’s brutal civil war who have not been reintegrated into society. Instead, they will continue to pose a threat to Sierra Leone’s future stability.

Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier and UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War worries about the country’s former child soldiers. Credit: Mustapha Dumbuya

Taylor is being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague. He is charged with crimes against humanity, mass killings, sexual violence and the use of child soldiers through his support of the rebel Revolutionary United Front in exchange for “blood diamonds”. Taylor is alleged to have masterminded the use of drug-fuelled child soldiers in combat.

Ishmael Beah is one of those former child soldiers. He was forced to join Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war at the age of 13, when he was recruited into the government army. While he has been able to turn his life around and was appointed the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) first Advocate for Children Affected by War in 2007, Beah worries about the country’s former child soldiers who are now unemployed.

“If Taylor is found guilty, it will be a great victory, not only for Sierra Leone, but for the whole of West Africa,” says Beah, who fought in the army for three years before being rescued by UNICEF.

“But if he is acquitted, it will be a big blow to everyone in Sierra Leone and the rest of West Africa.”

Beah says that with Sierra Leone’s elections approaching in November, the youth should be employed in order to avoid them being used by political parties to disrupt the electoral process.

“One of my greatest fears in Sierra Leone now is, if you have a large number of disgruntled and idle young people who have nothing to do with themselves, you have the possibility of sparking anything,” says Beah.

In September 2011, political violence in the southern city of Bo left one dead and 23 injured. The government’s Kevin Lewis Commission of Inquiry into the incident found that political parties were using ex-combatants as unofficial bodyguards. Political violence later erupted across the country in January after a by-election.

Unemployed youth are easy targets for recruitment, says Beah.

“The guy hasn’t had anything to eat for today, so he is not thinking long term, he’s thinking short term, about what he can eat now,” says Beah.

“I used to be in that position. You can’t expect anybody with short-term thinking to think for the future if you can’t provide them with the opportunity to have one.”

The U.N. estimates that 10,000 child soldiers were used in Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war. During it rebels cut off the arms of those who had voted in the country’s elections, and left more than 50,000 people dead.

The U.N.-brokered Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) process was meant to disarm and provide training to former fighters, and support them to rejoin their communities. Ex-combatants received vocational training in areas such as mechanics, driving and carpentry.

According to a 2005 U.N. report titled Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration and Stability in Africa, about 71,000 ex-combatants were disarmed and demobilised.

But many former fighters say that the programme did not work.

Tamba Fasuluku was known as “Rainu” when he was the commander of a rebel faction called the West Side Boys.

Fasuluku says that he was fortunate to be reintegrated into society and now works as a pastor. But he says that many of the young boys his forces conscripted have not been so lucky.

“It pains me now to see these young boys languishing on the streets without jobs,” says Fasuluku. “They have also become easy targets for greedy politicians who use these boys to cause trouble in society.”

He agrees that most of the political violence in Sierra Leone is perpetrated by ex-combatants. He says it is because they were given access to arms and exposed to violence at a tender age during the war. He adds that it is also because their families and society are yet to welcome them back as members of the community.

“If the government and other stakeholders do not come together to take these boys off the streets, they will continue to go astray, and that’s dangerous for peace,” says Fasuluku.

Dr. Alfred Jarret, the head of sociology and social work at Freetown’s Fourah Bay College, calls the DDR programme an “abysmal failure”.

Bobson Yappo Sesay, a former child soldier, agrees: “I was disarmed and never got any benefit from the DDR programme.”

“I can’t go home again,” Sesay says, explaining that he now lives as an unemployed youth in the capital, Freetown.

Jarret says ex-combatants were not well trained and because of Sierra Leone’s high unemployment rate many were unable to find work. According to the Ministry of Labour, the national youth unemployment rate was about 46 percent in 2008. The professor also says that former fighters face discrimination from potential employers and society at large.

Until the government revisits its policy on ex-combatants and tries to engage them, it will pose a serious threat to the country’s security, says Jarret.

The government itself says it offers no support to former fighters. Ibrahim Satie Kamara is the spokesperson for the National Commission for Social Action, the government agency responsible for the reparation programme for victims of the conflict.

Kamara says that the government’s reparations programmes cater for victims, such as amputees, the severely war-wounded, and children affected by the war.

Ex-combatants, including former child soldiers, fell under the DDR process. There is no government reparation programme for them, he says.

Kamara adds that war victims are discontent with the amount of support being given to former fighters, who are often viewed as perpetrators who unleashed suffering on the people.

Beah says the former DDR programme worked well for some but others missed out or needed more help. And now there is nothing left to help them.

“You can’t just take the guns from them and then teach them how to fix a car and expect them to do miracles with their lives when they don’t have the resources.”

It was the middle of the day when Tabisou, 72, suddenly saw people from her town of Amderamboukane in Mali fleeing for their lives. Her family had no time to pack their things; the fighting had already begun.

Several of the children in Abala camp are visibly malnourished, and NGO workers are concerned about potential epidemics. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

“Everything I have worked for over my whole life was lost. Just like that,” says the elderly woman who comes from a family of farmers as she sits in a United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) tent at the Abala refugee camp, 85 kilometres from the Mali-Niger border. “We had to leave all our animals and food.”

Tabisou is one of nearly 270,000 refugees who have had to flee their homes since January, when conflict erupted in northern Mali. That had begun after hundreds of Tuareg mercenaries, formerly hired by slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to fight alongside him, returned to Mali after he was toppled, with heavy weapons, to restart their own five-decade-old rebellion.

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) claims to fight against the marginalisation and oppression of the Tuareg people in northern Mali. The Tuareg are a Berber people of the desert and traditionally are nomadic and have long complained that the Malian government has marginalised them.

Tabisou does not care much for the MNLA’s grievances. “I am an old lady, and have many grandchildren,” she says pointing to the gaunt and dirtied children’s faces gathered around her in the tent. “The rebels do not care about us, they treated us very badly.”

Tabisou claims the rebels came into her home, waved guns in her face, and asked all the children to line up outside. “I thought they were going to kill us, luckily two of the rebels told the others to calm down.”

According to UNHCR representative Mariata Sandouno most of the refugees have fled due to fear of the various armed groups.

“Most of them said that they fled out of fear, also due to ongoing looting by bandits, and the withdrawal of the national army has made them feel insecure,” explains Sandouno. The army withdrew from Amderamboukane in January when the rebels seized control of the town of 3,000 people.

“Also some refugees said it was a very confusing scenario as they were not able to distinguish which of the groups armed men belonged to.”

The refugees come from the Haussa, Tuareg and Songhai ethnic groups. According to Ibrahim Ag Abdil, a 30 year-old pastoralist, few of the people in the camp support the MNLA’s cause. The MNLA is an umbrella term given to groups of armed Tuaregs who have come together with the declared goal of administrating an independent state, Azawad.

“Mali is already a very poor country, we have to rely on the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe for aid,” he explains. “The MNLA are just making more divisions. How can we survive as two countries, when we are barely surviving as one?”

Ag Abdil says the MNLA stole all the motorbikes belonging to civilians in his town of Amderamboukane. After the MNLA left, he says, bandits entered the city and looted all the shops and homes.

“We don’t know if there is even anything left,” he tells IPS. “The MNLA are not protecting civilians’ possessions, they are just attacking towns, leaving them, and then the place is empty for bandits to come and steal.”

Next to him, Ajawa, 72, nods his head. “They say they fight for all the Tuaregs but in fact they only fight for a few, many Tuaregs don’t support them,” he says. “Now we’re stuck in this camp. It is painful to see my people begging for handouts, and our children not able to go to school.”

When the MNLA arrived in Amderamboukane, the citizens fled the eastern Malian town and walked two months to find refuge in Niger. When these refugees first arrived, they stayed in a makeshift camp at Sinegodar, 10 km from the border.

“We were always worrying about warmth at night, and food during the day,” says Salima, 19. Several of the children in Abala camp are visibly malnourished, and NGO workers are concerned about potential epidemics.

There are currently 6,286 refugees at Abala camp out of an estimated 26,500 who have fled to Niger. The rest are in Burkino Faso and Mauritania, while there are over 80,000 internally displaced inside Mali. UNHCR will soon open more refugee camps in Mangaize and Ayorou, both towns in Niger.

According to Antonio Jose Canhandula, head of UNHCR’s emergency team, the biggest concern for the agency at the moment is that the refugees are entering a food crisis in Niger.

“These refugees are coming into a food crisis in Niger, which will aggravate the situation here,” says Canhandula. “They are nomadic people, coming with cattle and other animals, so we are trying to adapt to their needs and minimise the burden on the host community, who are already facing a famine and water shortage.”

UNHCR reports that there are currently 300 urban refugees in Niamey. Most of the refugees coming through Niamey are government members who have travelled from Gao in Mali. They are seeking assistance to return to Bamako, Mali’s capital, and reunite with their families, collect salaries or just show they have not abandoned their jobs since the Mar. 22 coup that overthrew the government. There are also reports of military staff fleeing to Niamey in order to return to Bamako.

Six West African heads of state will attend a regional summit in Guinea on Monday, to discuss the situation in neighbouring Guinea Bissau, where an Apr. 12 coup d’état aborted presidential elections.

The Economic Community of West African States sent a delegation to Bissau, the capital, immediately following the coup to urge the immediate restoration of constitutional rule.

Ahead of the Apr. 23 summit, ECOWAS has rejected the authority of a National Transitional Council (NTC) which the coup plotters’ say they have put in place to run Guinea-Bissau for the next two years.

The NTC was established following the signing of an accord on Apr. 18 by the junta and leaders of 20 opposition parties who have come out in support of the coup.

The junta announced that the council was to be headed by Manuel Sherif Nhamadjo, who finished third in the first round of presidential elections on Mar. 18. However, Nhamadjo told Al Jazeera: “I was not consulted for the post of president of the transition.” He said he would remain in his current position as vice president of the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).

Ibrahima Sory Diallo, from the Party for Social Renewal (PRS), was named as vice president by the junta. The PRS’s presidential candidate, Kumba Yala, was runner-up in the March poll, but has refused to contest a second round against the ruling party candidate and former prime minister, Carlos Gomes Junior, alleging fraud by his opponent.

Following the coup, the PAIGC has joined a coalition with eight other parties in denouncing the NTC as illegal and calling for a return to constitutional legality and the completion of the electoral process.

ECOWAS said on Apr. 19 that it regarded the creation of the NTC as an “usurpation of power”, and reminded the coup leaders that they had earlier this month committed themselves to working with the regional body – to which Guinea-Bissau belongs – to allow the immediate restoration of normal constitutional rule.

The West African leaders urged a swift restoration of constitutional order as well as the release of Gomes Junior and Raimundo Pereira, who was appointed as interim head of state following the death of President Malam Bacai Sanhá in January after a long illness. Both leaders were arrested and have been left out of the transition programme imposed by the military rulers.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which was able to visit the interim president and former prime minister in custody, said it had been able to give them medical supplies, clothes and toiletries, adding that both men have been allowed to send news to their families.

According to some sources, the coup’s leaders on Apr. 20 announced that five ECOWAS heads of state would visit Bissau on Monday for discussions with military and civil authorities, with a view to finding an exit from the country’s political crisis. But the junta did not specify which ECOWAS leaders they were expecting, and the information has not been confirmed by the regional body.

The Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), currently headed by Angola, adopted a resolution at an Apr. 14 meeting in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, calling for the creation of an “intervention force under the aegis of the United Nations.” The CPLP continues to insist on the deployment of soldiers with the assistance of ECOWAS, the African Union (AU) and the European Union.

But Guinea-Bissau’s military command has accused Angola of interfering in security matters of their country. But Lieutenant Colonel Daba Nah Waina, one of the coup leaders, told IPS, “The crisis has been brewing since Angolan soldiers arrived in Guinea-Bissau with vehicles and weapons, but without notifying the chief of staff of the armed forces of the country.”

The Angolan government operates a bauxite mine in the east of Guinea-Bissau – the country is one of the world’s leading producers of this mineral – and also has an interest in a project to construct a new port in the south.

Since October 2011, some 300 Angolan troops have been present in Guinea-Bissau, drafted in to reform the army and police of the country in line with an agreement between the two governments. But the coup plotters accuse Angola of wanting to “destroy” the country’s army and called for the withdrawal of the troops.

For its part, the African Union decided on Apr. 17 to suspend Guinea-Bissau from all AU activities with immediate effect, pending restoration of constitutional order.

Both the African Development Bank and the World Bank, which have called for a swift resolution of the crisis, have suspended development programmes in Guinea-Bissau, with the exception of urgent assistance.

When war-torn Somalia was also ravaged by a drought-induced famine last year, which killed tens of thousands and displaced over a million people, international media was quick to blame the Islamist Al-Shabaab for blocking humanitarian assistance from reaching its zone of control in southern Somalia.

Ken Menkhaus, political science professor at Davidson College in North Carolina, blames the USA Patriot Act for blocking aid to Somali famine victims Credit: Linus Atarah/IPS

But according to Ken Menkhaus, professor of Political Science at Davidson College in North Carolina, the United States’ counter-terrorism laws played an equally central role in obstructing assistance from reaching famine victims in desperate need of aid.

Speaking here in a seminar on Wednesday, organised by the Department of the Study of Religions at Helsinki University, Menkhaus said humanitarian organisations suspended food aid delivery to drought- struck areas controlled by Al-Shabaab for fear of violating the USA Patriot Act.

Congress passed the Act in 2001 as part of its response to the Sep. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon and under it, anyone who provides material benefits, even if unwittingly, to a designated terrorist group, could face the most severe penalties.

Given that Al-Shabaab – the Somali cell of the militant Islamist Al-Qaeda, fighting the Federal Transitional Government (FTG) in Somalia and controlling vast swathes of the south except the capital Mogadishu – is designated a terrorist organisation by the U.S., humanitarian groups were fearful that an accusation of ‘aiding terrorists’ could damage their entire organisation.

Thus many reached the conclusion that they were too vulnerable to operate in Al-Shabaab-controlled areas.

Though the group undoubtedly prevented assistance from reaching starving famine victims based on its claim that food aid was a Western conspiracy to drive Somali farmers out of business, Menkhaus, a specialist on the Horn of Africa, believes that was not the end of the sordid story.

“There are plenty of western countries, including my own government, who would like to see the conversation stop right there and say it was all Al-Shabaab’s fault.” However, the other bottleneck was U.S. policy, which “de facto criminalises any transactions in southern Somalia,” he said.

Other countries have similar laws, but since the U.S. supplies the bulk of food aid to Somalia, it has the heaviest impact on the country.

In a twist of tragic irony, “suspension of food aid into southern Somalia was the only thing that the U.S. government and Al-Shabaab could agree on, to the detriment of (millions) of Somalis,” Menkhaus told IPS.

In reality, the U.S. could have issued a waiver, protecting relief agencies from counter-terrorism laws; similar waivers have been issued for relief agencies in southern Lebanon and the West Bank of the occupied Palestinian territories, where Hezbollah and Hamas operate respectively.

But in the case of Somalia, Menkhaus believes the U.S. administration did not want to give its Republican opponents any political leverage on the eve of upcoming presidential elections by appearing too “soft on terrorism”.

Instead, the U.S. government prepared a document that purportedly gave relief agencies protection from the law but which, upon close examination by legal experts, was found to contain no such protections, leaving those humanitarian agencies vulnerable to attack under the Patriot Act.

Recent forecasts indicate that Somalia could soon be facing another drought, which could produce yet another food crisis in the country this year. There is now an urgent need for preemptive decisions, by the U.S. government in particular, to avoid another humanitarian catastrophe, Menkhaus said.

Al-Shabab waning?

A Somali national working with an aid agency on the ground in the south of the country, who did not want to be identified because of concern for his safety, told IPS that Al-Shabaab is gradually losing support as increasing numbers of Somalis are beginning to resent the group’s forcible recruitment policy and suicide bombings.

Formed in 2008 to resist the invasion of neighbouring Ethiopian forces, Al-Shabaab was once a popular movement, seen as a legitimate force to oust an invading army in the face of the FTG’s inaction. It had also brought law and order to several regions torn asunder by warring gangs of warlords.

However, Menkhaus said that the group has been seriously weakened by multiple military defeats at the hands of the 12,000 African Union peacekeepers in the country; and its tactic of deploying suicide bombers among the civilian population is alienating much of the group’s former support base.

Abdi-Rashid, who did not want his full identity revealed, accused Western governments of exacerbating what he described as the “politicisation of aid in Somalia”, whereby the humanitarian agenda is becomes secondary to the political agenda.

Huge importance has been heaped on the civil war and the “security situation”, much of it with good reason: by 2008 Somalia was the most dangerous place in the world for humanitarian aid workers.

“One-third of all humanitarian casualties occurred not in Afghanistan or in Iraq but in Somalia,” Menkhaus said.

Still, this was no excuse to allow famine victims to perish en masse, he stressed.

“Long term development work should still go on in spite of the conflict” to secure people’s basic human rights to tangible things like “schools and drinking wells”, Abdi-Rashid told IPS.

If such long-term issues are ignored much longer, there will be serious consequences not only for Somalia but for the entire region.

“These famines – the ones we had last year and the one we may have in 2012 – are producing seismic changes (including) the loss of viable livelihoods in rural southern Somalia, sending waves of people across the borders into Kenya and Ethiopia,” added Abdi-Rashid.

The Kenyan refugee camp of Dadaab, with a population of 520,000, is now Kenya’s third largest city, and completely unsustainable.

Meanwhile, destitute nomads and farmers who can no longer find livelihoods in rural areas are drifting into urban centres. These people, who come with no technical skills into a barren employment landscape, are forming huge slums of several hundred thousand people in villages that previous housed only a few thousand residents.

“This is a time bomb for Somalia because not only Al-Shabaab but any armed group or criminal gang (will) find ready recruits in these sprawling urban slums,” Abdi-Rashid concluded.

Cheick Modibo Diarra has been named interim prime minister of Mali as a transitional administration takes shape, to guide the country back to full constitutional government. But despite agreeing to hand power back to civilians, the military junta intends to retain an oversight role in the transition.

Timbuktu is one of the northern Malian cities seized by Tuareg and Islamist rebels. Credit: Emilio Labrador/CC BY 2.0

Diarra is a 60-year-old astrophysicist with dual U.S. and Malian nationality, who has previously worked for the U.S. space agency NASA and as the president of Microsoft Africa. He entered politics last year, establishing the Rassemblement pour le développement du Mali (RPDM) party, with the intent of contesting presidential elections originally planned for April 2012.

Those elections were abandoned following an uprising by Islamist and Tuareg rebels in the north and the Mar. 22 coup d’état which toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré.

The interim prime minister, appointed in line with a framework accord for restoring civilian rule agreed on Apr. 6 between the coup plotters and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), must now address a complex crisis in the north of the country.

Dissatisfaction – both within the army and in the wider population – with the government’s response to the January uprising launched by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) rebels was a key factor leading up to the coup. But a growing cast of factions then took advantage of the instability following the coup to expand and consolidate their rebellion.

The north, including the three major cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, is entirely in the hands of the MNLA, the main Tuareg rebel group seeking independence for the region, and Islamist forces who want to impose Islamic law across a unified Mali.

Uncertain transition

Even as Diarra was being congratulated on his appointment as prime minister, the military junta continued to arrest leading political and military figures from the previous government, holding them at the Kati military base 15 kilometres outside the capital, Bamako.

Those arrested at the beginning of the week, Apr. 16 and 17, include Modibo Sidibé, prime minister under President Amani Toumani Touré at the time of the coup, and Babaly Ba, the director general of the Malian Solidarity Bank.

Several high-ranking military personnel have also been detained: General Sadio Gassama, the former minister of defence, General Hamidou Sissoko, army chief of staff under Touré, and General Mahamadou Diagouraga, the national police commissioner.

Wednesday Apr. 18 saw the arrest of Kassoum Tapo and Tiéman Coulibaly, two leaders of the civil society coalition against the coup.

“While we welcome a return to normal, constitutional order, several people are in custody,” lawyer Hamidou Diabaté told IPS. “We don’t understand these detentions. If people must be arrested, then this should be left to the judicial system.”

Diabaté is a member of a political group opposed to the coup, the United Front to Safeguard Democracy and the Republic.

Under the Apr. 6 accord, the junta led by Captain Amadou Sanogo agreed to hand power over to civilians. The former president of the National Assembly, Dioncounda Traoré, was duly made interim president on Apr. 12, but the arrests taking place while the transitional government is set up have raised fears among politicians.

“It’s only now that we’ll see Captain Sanogo’s true face,” Ousmane Maïga, a member of the youth wing of the Union for the Republic and Democracy party (whose leader, Soumaïla Cissé, is also among those in detention), told IPS.

“His only ambition is to remain in power.”

Junta retains support

But the junta’s actions have the support of some civil society leaders. Responding to questions from IPS, Hamadoun Amion Guindo, president of Mali’s Trade Union Confederation of Workers (CSTM), said the soldiers must finish what they started.

Many trade unionists, associations and other political actors under the umbrella of the Coordination of Patriotic Organisations of Mali believe the framework accord gives the interim president the power to rule the country for only 40 days.

“ECOWAS and the military must find a consensus candidate to replace Dioncounda Traoré (after this period),” says Guindo.

The junta enjoys strong support in Bamako, particularly among the city’s poor. Wearing a badge bearing a picture of Sanogo, Fanta Sissoko, a resident of the Medina Coura neighbourhood, told IPS: “If the soldiers step down completely, the politicians will just continue with their corruption. We need new political leaders for the country to move forward.”

This backdrop only makes the task facing the prime minister in resolving the crisis in the north more difficult. Since Traoré was sworn in as president, initial contacts have been made with several of the insurgent factions. Around 200 soldiers who had been captured by Ansar Dine, the leading Islamist group in the north, have been freed and welcomed back to Bamako by the authorities.

In the eastern Sierra Leonean community of Lambayama, rice paddies are carved far into the landscape before being abruptly halted by distant hills. Aside from a paved road that draws a grey line through the green, swampy valley, it looks much as it did a century ago.

Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer, pushes a motorised soil tiller recently given to his farming cooperative. Credit: Damon Van der Linde/IPS

But under the sound of leaves rustling in the wind and chirping insects is the distant low hum of tilling machinery, a signal of the gradually changing way farmers are growing and selling this West African nation’s staple food.

The Smallholder Commercialisation Programme (SCP) is trying to put local farmers back in control of the country’s most-consumed crop. This government-run programme is in its fifth year of operation, and farmers say they are just beginning to discover there is money to be made in agriculture. Some components of the SCP are supported by the European Union and other development partners.

“Before, there was no profit. We had enough to eat, but not enough to sell,” said Zainab Makabu, who started farming rice to support her four children. “Now, we harvest, we sell some, we pay our children’s school fees and we eat some. Without this farming, we couldn’t educate our children.”

People in Sierra Leone often say that if they have not eaten rice, it is as if they have not eaten at all. Data from the 2009 “Economics of Rice Production in Sierra Leone” report, funded by the Soros Economic Development Fund, states that at least 40 percent is still imported from other countries like Pakistan, Thailand and neighbouring Guinea.

Increasing local rice production not only helps keep prices more stable, but also promotes national food security. Agriculture contributes about 50 percent of the country’s GDP and employs over 75 percent of the national work force. Still, most of the small farming in Sierra Leone is for sustenance – the farmers who produce it consume it or trade it without much money ever changing hands.

The SCP is trying to change the way farmers operate in three ways: by mechanising production, organising individuals, and promoting business. Through the programme, farmers are given seeds, machines, fertilisers, and training. The goal is to increase the crop yield and provide mechanisms that facilitate selling the product on the market.

“On the local level, small scale farmers are trying to expand on their production level, which is the thrust of the policy objective – to increase productivity through the farmer-based organisation. In the past, they were not getting the kind of requisite training that would help them increase their production levels. But now we see the farmers are getting the requisite training,” said Joseph Tholly, the District Agricultural Officer for the Lambayama community.

He added that previously farmers would just plant crops for their own consumption.

“They weren’t business-minded,” said Tholly. “In the past, you would only see old people involved in agriculture, but now we also see youth going into all different components of the business.”

Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war hit small farmers hard. Most of the fighting took place in rural areas, forcing many farmers to flee their land for Freetown, the capital city. But the city is congested with traffic and people, and there is not enough work to go around.

Tholly says the SCP programme tries to draw people back to the countryside with the potential of better pay and a higher quality of life. And it may be working. When the programme began, about 10 percent of people in his district earned their living from agriculture. Today, the number is closer to 60 percent.

“I’ve learned how to work this machinery and at the end of the day, I’m making a bigger profit for myself and my family,” said Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer. “I don’t plan to do any other kind of work.”

On a local level, the hub of the SCP is the Agricultural Business Centre (ABC). These clusters of buildings house the machinery to harvest and process crops, store the rice before selling it, and act as the administrative centre for farming collectives.

Each farmer makes a contribution of rice every year, which the ABC sells, putting the money in an account to be used for things like equipment maintenance. In Lambayama, Joseph Fecah manages the finances for one of the country’s 108 ABCs. He says they have not only been able to make a profit through the commercialisation programme, but have used this money to build an additional storeroom with no assistance from the government.

“It is an expansion on traditional farming. Initially they were doing it on a small scale but the government is encouraging us to do farming on a larger scale,” said Fecah. “We have money going in constantly. We’re doing well, for now.”

The EU has supported development initiatives in Sierra Leone for the past 40 years, and has been involved in the small-scale agriculture programme since its inception. Through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), the EU provides 16 million euros a year in donations for training and investment in initiatives like the SCP.

The programme has had its challenges, and with a 25-year plan, there is a long way to go. Farmers say they need more donations in the form of transportation to move their products, and better packaging to further increase the commercial viability.

**The original story that moved on Apr. 12 has been re-issued with new sources.

As the process of reintegrating South Sudan’s child soldiers into their old lives begins soon, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army renewal of its lapsed commitment to release all child soldiers from its ranks in March could mean that within two years children will no longer constitute part of the country’s militia groups.

Southern Sudanese soldiers from the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. Militia groups affiliated with the army still recruit child soldiers. Credit: Peter Martell/IRIN

The SPLA, which is the military wing of the South Sudanese political party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, is one of the few remaining national militaries in the world on the United Nations’ list of parties to conflict who recruit and use child soldiers. The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are 2,000 child soldiers in South Sudan. Though none are within the official SPLA, they are affiliated with militia groups that have earned amnesties from the government and are being integrated into the national military.

If the SPLA follows the action plan it has drafted and signed – removing all child soldiers from the militias and working to get them education and training opportunities – the country could be off the list in as soon as two years.

For the child soldiers, though, the process of reintegration could take much longer, as they enter schools or learn skills that will provide other opportunities for making a living outside army barracks.

The process will begin, according to Fatuma H. Ibrahim, the chief of UNICEF’s child protection unit in South Sudan, by identifying and securing the formal release of all child soldiers. On their way out, they will be given civilian clothing, because “what is military remains with the military,” she said.

The youth, who can range in age from as young as 12 up to 18, will undergo some group therapy sessions with social workers to try to understand how they came to join the militias and to talk about any violence they may have encountered.

She said there will be about one percent who “really need some clinical management,” though their options will be limited in a country with few psychiatric resources. “It’s a very big problem. Most receive tablets, but that’s it.”

Family members will also meet with social workers to discuss reintegration and ensure that the children will be welcomed back and discouraged from re-joining.

“The parents have to be ready to receive them,” Ibrahim said. In some communities in South Sudan that includes a symbolic transition ceremony.

In a country that has known war for more than two decades, the military is often one of the few viable economic opportunities for young men. Many of the children UNICEF and its partners remove from the ranks followed that pattern – looking to a position with a militia to provide some financial security for themselves and their families.

One of UNICEF’s big challenges is providing opportunities that deter the delisted child soldiers from going back. After the new release rounds take place, the youth will be given an opportunity to choose between going to school, which many of the younger ones will opt for, Ibrahim said, or learning a trade. The country’s limited job market means older youth are encouraged to learn skills like carpentry, which is in increasing demand in rapidly growing towns. In the future, they will be trained in two skills, in case the first one does not prove marketable.

UNICEF and other organisations are also working to provide incentives to keep the child soldiers from re-enlisting. Ibrahim pointed to a livestock-rearing project, where former child soldiers are given a goat to raise and breed.

If the programme is going to work, she said, the incentives have “to be meaningful.”

South Sudan’s new action plan was officially signed on Mar. 16 by the country’s Ministry of Defence, the U.N. peacekeeping force in South Sudan – UNMISS, UNICEF and Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy.

Since it achieved independence last year, South Sudan has seen sporadic violence flare up across the country. In the north, there are ongoing hostilities with Sudan. And various parts of the country – especially Jonglei state – have seen consistent intertribal conflict over land rights and cattle.

Coomaraswamy said most of the country’s child soldiers are found in the north, where violence has been most consistent.

South Sudan has been on the U.N. list long before its independence in July 2010. The earlier incarnation of the SPLA – the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement – was one of the original groups included when the list was drafted in 2002.

In 2006 a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed between north and south Sudan, which ended decades of fighting and paved the way for South Sudanese independence. At the time, the SPLA committed to an action plan to release its child soldiers, though it did not completely follow through.

By 2009, monitoring organisations had found no child soldiers within the main SPLA, though they still existed in the militia groups.

Coomaraswamy said the country’s renewed commitment comes from “the power of the list” and pressure from international partners.

And while the U.N. has never sanctioned South Sudan over its inclusion, she said there was always a possibility that would happen. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for instance, has suffered sanctions as a result of its inclusion.

Coomaraswamy said her office is currently in negotiations with the DRC, Myanmar, also known as Burma, and Somalia – the only government militaries who have not yet signed on to an action plan. 
 *Andrew Green is reporting from South Sudan on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project,
 an independent journalism programme based in Washington, D.C.

As Western forces step up their military presence in Somalia, locals and experts are worried that the country – struggling under multiple crises from piracy, to drought – is doomed to churn in a cycle of violence that fails to acknowledge root causes of the problems.

Making bold moves to curb piracy efforts on the Somali coast, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union have decided to extend counter-piracy missions until the end of 2014.

The EU operation, called Atalanta, has also been extended to include land targets in order to work closely with the Transitional Federal Government and other Somali entities, according to a statement from the Council of the EU – a move that has been widely condemned by experts who believe these attacks will threaten civilian life and undermine anti-piracy efforts.

“Fighting piracy and its root causes is a priority of our action in the Horn of Africa. Despite pressure on defense budgets, EU member states demonstrate their renewed commitment to this successful operation,” EU High Representative Catherine Ashton said in a statement issued Mar. 23.

The announcement came days after Rear Admiral Duncan L. Potts, operation commander for Atalanta, addressed the Subcommittee on Security and Defense and announced it was time for the EU to “tighten pressure on pirates and reach out to Somalis.”

Already, operation Atalanta and NATO’s operation Ocean Shield, along with U.S. maritime forces and other national actors, can tentatively boast a decreased number of pirate attacks.

According to Potts, 2011 can be looked at as a “year of two halves” in terms of EU efforts—during the first half of the year, 28 vessels were commandeered, while the second half of the year saw only three vessels overtaken.

NATO reports decreased pirate activity as well. In Jan. 2011, there were 29 attacks and six ships overtaken, while numbers for Jan. 2012 showed only four attacks, none of which were successful.

Still, there has been widespread criticism over increased security in the country, with many experts arguing that international naval forces simply fuel a cycle of violence and fail to address the root causes of Somalia’s instability.

Others believe the use of violence to defeat piracy is misguided, since illegal fishing and dumping in Somali waters have been exposed as the root causes of piracy as a whole.

Desperate for food

Somalia remains one of the most difficult countries for humanitarian groups to operate in, owing to decades of violence and, in more recent years, a crippling drought that has left thousands dead and millions starving.

According to the World Food Programme, 2.4 million people are in need of assistance in Somalia, roughly 32 percent of the population. Currently, the WFP reaches up to 1.3 million people along the coast of Somalia, as well as in Puntland, Somaliland, and Mogadishu.

The goals of Operation Atalanta, according to the EU Naval Force (EU NAVFOR), include deterring and preventing acts of piracy, protecting shipping off the Somali coast, as well as protecting WFP vessels carrying food to displaced persons.

Thus far, EU NAVFOR reports the successful delivery of nearly 900,000 metric tonnes of food to relief efforts in Somalia, with 145 WFP ships escorted to shore.

The scale of violence has impacted other aid organisations as well, with aid workers often caught in the midst of deadly attacks in their line of work.

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF) recently condemned the shelling of the emergency room and surgical ward of Mogadishu’s Daynile Hospital in late March. MSF has worked in the hospital since 2006 as part of the organisation’s 13 operations within the country.

The organisation’s efforts in the Hodan district of the capital were cut in half this January, after two aid workers, Philippe Havet and Karel Keiluhu, were killed.

MSF continues to call for the release of two aid workers, Blanca Thiebaut and Montserrat Serra, who were abducted from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya in October last year, while providing assistance to Somali refugees.

Disrupting the ‘business model’ of piracy

Most experts are widely agreed on the fact that Somalia’s future depends on treating the “symptoms” of the failed state by eventually curtailing piracy, promoting a stable national government and establishing a robust judicial system.

Potts acknowledged that those who commit acts of piracy are part of the disenfranchised population, driven to the “cash-rich but asset-poor” business of piracy. He described the pirates as “criminals of opportunity” who don’t discriminate based on whatever national flag a ship raises.

Indeed, the fact that the most sophisticated aerial surveillance systems have been unable to take out the modestly equipped pirates is testament to the latter’s economic desperation.

Still, locals are losing tolerance for continued acts of piracy, according to Potts. Efforts to dissuade citizens from falling into piracy include involving clan elders in Somalia, who are poised to get the message across, particularly to the youth.

Alexander Rondos, the EU Special Representative for the Horn of Africa, described a “lost generation” of youth that pays an awful price for piracy.

Potts lamented the EU’s limited ability to properly handle underage suspects of piracy, given the lack of effective legal and rehabilitation systems capable of “processing” these criminal minors.

Cautious Optimism?

When Rondos visited Somalia just hours before addressing the Subcommittee on Mar. 20 he noted that the next several months are absolutely crucial to the country’s future.

He stressed the need for effective judicial systems and institutions that are rooted in the grassroots and affect the needs of local communities.

Efforts cannot rely solely on the “EU and a collection of white people who feel good about helping others,” Rondos claimed, highlighting the need for solutions that include local voices.

Still, Rondos mentioned signs of hope within Mogadishu— he described movements of people returning to the city, investing in day-to-day life and opening new businesses.

Though still a threat, the Somali-based terrorist group Al-Shabaab is beginning to “melt away,” according to Rondos, who added that he observed “indications of a growing number of people affiliated with Al-Shabaab that want to detach themselves” from the outfit, though the core of the group remains active.

With cautious optimism, the importance of providing security for the Somali people remains a priority, Rondos said.

As armed groups have captured Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, the three largest cities in northern Mali, the differences within the alliance have begun to emerge. There are reports of rape and looting in Gao, while in Timbuktu an Islamist faction, Ansar Dine, has announced the imposition of sharia law.

Tuareg rebels have seized Timbuktu and other northern cities in Mali. Credit: Emilio Labrador/CC BY 2.0

As the leaders of a Mar. 22 coup in the capital, Bamako, considered their response to an ultimatum from the regional bloc ECOWAS to step down, events in the north accelerated with the three largest cities passing into the hands of armed groups.

“On the radio, the rebels said they would not harm the civilian population, but they asked women to veil themselves when they go out,” Timbuktu resident Badji Maïga told IPS. “They also asked people to welcome them and arrested those they caught looting.” The Bamako-based weekly La Nouvelle République reported that Ansar Dine founder Iyad Ag Ghali took to the airwaves of Timbuktu’s Radio Boctou to explain the group’s intentions. “Misfortune is due to people’s lack of faith in God, and because they have abandoned the practice of sharia, because we have changed our way of life under the influence of Whites,” he said.

“It is for this reason that there is misery, licentiousness and other ills in our society.”

Ag Ghali also played a leading role in an earlier rebellion in the 1990s, and his group has rapidly gained prominence in the current uprising in northern Mali.

“People spotted many foreigners amongst the Islamists, including Nigerians, Mauritanians and Algerians,” Cissé told IPS.

While the MNLA has said it is fighting for the independence of the northern region, Ansar Dine wants to preserve the country’s present borders, but turn Mali into an Islamic republic under sharia law.

In its Tuesday Apr. 3 edition, Bamako-based daily La Républicain announced that Ag Ghali, in a hearts-and-minds operation, had visited a city hospital to greet the sick and donate medicine. “Shortly after this visit, he sent his troops throughout the city to ask women to wear the veil,” the article said.

This Islamist push worries Malian women who are used to dressing as they please.

“I don’t want to live in a country where which clothes and which hairstyles one wears are controlled,” Kadiatou Samaké, who manages a hair salon in Bamako, told IPS. “That’s why I’m afraid that the Islamists will extend their influence in Mali. Women will suffer if this happens.”

But for the moment, the Islamists have not yet used force to apply their edicts in the north, according to sources in Timbuktu.

The Islamist groups said in Timbuktu that they had come to spread the word of God and not to attack people or their property. But according to Cissé, they have publicly punished four youth caught sabotaging equipment belonging to the national electricity company.

In the other cities under rebel control, women have been targets of a different kind.

“Women are being raped. In Gao, women have been raped in public,” said Al Mahdi Cissé, a member of a collective of people of northern origin, during a march organised in Bamako on Tuesday in support of residents of the north.

Responding to questions from IPS, Kadiatou Sangaré, the president of the National Commission on Human Rights in Mali, condemned human rights violations in the north. “Several women were raped in Gao, while others were taken away.”

Gao’s residents are also facing a food crisis, according to Alassane Touré, a resident who IPS reached by phone on Thursday Apr. 5. “You can no longer buy food here. The rebels have smashed up the shops and the warehouses; they have looted the petrol stations,” he said.

By Correspondents and - -
DOHA, Apr 5 2012 (IPS)

A spokesman for the main Tuareg rebel group, which recently seized the three largest areas in Mali’s north, says it has declared a ceasefire, one day after the United Nations Security Council called for an end to violence in the West African nation.

Tuaregs on the road between Mali and Burkina Faso. Credit: Marco Bellucci/CC BY 2.0

Moussa Ag Assarid, a Paris-based spokesman for the National Movement for the Liberation of the AZAWAD (MNLA), said on Thursday that the group was ceasing military operations because it had reached its goal.

“Since the day before yesterday when our units reached Douentza, which we consider to be the frontier [of the AZAWAD region], the military offensive is declared over,” Assarid said.

The rebels, battling alongside al-Qaeda-allied armed groups, swept through northern Mali last week, pushing government forces from Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, the three northern regions of Mali that the MNLA says will form the new “Azawad” state.

The rebels were able to make gains when a group of disgruntled soldiers started a mutiny and within hours forced the president, Amadou Toumani Toure, to flee, ending two decades of democracy in Mali.

The soldiers say they did so because of Toure’s mishandling of the Tuareg rebels’ uprising in the north.

Uneasy relationship

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday called for an immediate ceasefire but proposed no firm action to reverse a sequence that has seen a country hailed as a democratic success story descend into chaos in barely two weeks.

While the MNLA is fighting for a Tuareg homeland, Ansar Dine, the Islamist force that the MNLA has operated with, said it wanted to impose Sharia law in northern Mali.

Analysts say the loosely allied groups have an uneasy relationship, prompting speculation of future clashes between the two.

The MNLA statement asked the international community to protect Azawad, but African nations and world bodies have unanimously rejected the idea of Mali’s north seceding.

On Thursday, Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister, called for a political solution to deal with the rebellion in the north.

“There will not be a military solution with the Tuaregs. There needs to be a political solution,” Juppe told journalists, calling on countries in the region to work together. *Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Excerpt:

West African heads of state meeting in Côte d’Ivoire have given Mali’s military junta three days to restore constitutional order and step down – or face a range of diplomatic and economic sanctions.

Captain Amadou Sanogo, leader of the Mar. 22 coup which sent President Amadou Toumani Touré into hiding, responded by saying that he remains open to dialogue while appealing for assistance in dealing with the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country.

An extraordinary meeting of the Economic Community of West African States earlier in the week had decided to send a high-level delegation to the Malian capital on Thursday, but the mission was abandoned at the last moment, when several dozen supporters of Sanogo’s fledgling administration occupied the tarmac at the Bamako airport.

Tensions were running high in Bamako, on a day where groups of young activists for and against the coup clashed at the Labour Exchange in the capital.

Supporters of the junta stormed the airport on Thursday morning to protest against the ECOWAS delegation. Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara’s plane, which had already entered Malian airspace, returned to the Ivorian capital, Abidjan.

The regional leaders proceeded to meet in Côte d’Ivoire. Daniel Kablan Duncan, the Ivorian foreign minister, told Radio France International that ECOWAS had told the coup-plotters that if they did not return power to the elected government they had deposed by Monday, they would face sanctions.

The threatened sanctions include the freezing of Mali’s account at BCEAO, (the Central Bank of West African States – a regional bank serving the francophone countries that share a single currency, the CFA franc), the suspension of access by private Malian banks to BCEAO, the recall of ECOWAS member states’ ambassadors from Bamako, and the closure of borders with neighbouring countries.

According to a source close to the military, the junta would have met with ECOWAS representatives already on the ground in Bamako, such as the Burkinabè foreign affairs minister, Djibril Bassolé. According to analysts, this is a means for Captain Sanogo to show that he has not broken off all dialogue, as he is well aware of the looming threat of sanctions.

The aborted visit by ECOWAS leaders was preceded by the arrival in Bamako on Wednesday of a delegation of army chiefs from the region. The head of this mission, General Soumaïla Bakayoko, appeared on Malian television to say that they had come to ask the junta to step aside.

The coup-plotters told the army chiefs that they were prepared to do whatever was necessary for the good of the country.

Prior to the army chiefs’ arrival in Bamako, several thousand sympathisers marched in the streets of the capital to demonstrate their support for the coup, shouting slogans including, “Down with ECOWAS! Down with France! Viva the army!”

Among the organisers of this march was the African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence party (SADI), the only political party represented in parliament that has expressed support for the coup. Addressing an excited crowd, Dr Oumar Mariko, the secretary general of SADI, said the international community had not helped Mali when the country needed support to fight against Tuareg rebels.

Against this, a coalition of 36 political parties and civil society organisations has come out strongly in support of mediation by ECOWAS. Members of the coalition meeting at the Labour Exchange on Thursday morning were attacked by young supporters of the new regime. “We went to the Labour Exchange for a sit-in, but the youth attacked us with stones,” Sega Diabaté, an opponent of the coup, told IPS.

The coalition does not intend to give the junta a moment’s rest. It has put forward a plan for a campaign to “defeat the coup, restore constitutional order and return soldiers to their barracks”. But the coalition is conscious of the challenges facing the Malian army, and has sought to reassure rank and file troops.

“We will listen carefully to the demands of the army and the security forces with regards to the improvement of their living and working conditions, particularly as relates to the situation for the families of soldiers killed on the frontline (in the north),” said Tiébilé Dramé, a former minister for foreign affairs and member of the coalition against the coup.

Deposed President Amadou Toumani Touré broke his silence on Wednesday Mar. 28, granting an interview to Radio France International that was broadcast across Africa. He said that he and his family remain in Mali, and are not being detained by the new regime. Elected in 2007 for a second five-year term as president, Toumani Touré was expected to leave power in June, following presidential elections that had been scheduled for Apr. 29.

But the outbreak of rebellion in northern Mali in mid-January and deepening social malaise have profoundly tarnished his image in the country since the start of the year.

Paradoxically, many people who oppose the coup as a matter of principle support Toumani Touré’s overthrow.

“We, who retired voluntarily, we are encouraged by this coup d’état. It is only now that there will be a true democracy where equality in the eyes of law can become a reality for all,” Abdoul Sidibé, a former policeman, told IPS. “For more than 20 years, there has been an international perception that Mali was a democratic country, while corruption and impunity reigned.”

Life is slowly returning to normal in the Malian capital after widespread looting last week. Several prominent figures associated with the former regime had been arrested, but they were released on Tuesday Mar. 27.

Meanwhile on the northern battlefront, the Tuareg website Ternoust (www.ternoust.org) said that the outskirts of the northern city of Kidal had been under rebel attack since Thursday morning, but there has been no confirmation of this from other local sources.

By IPS Correspondents and - -
DAKAR, Mar 28 2012 (IPS)

Analysts say that Senegal’s outgoing President Abdoulaye Wade was made to pay for his failure to respond to popular demands, particularly arising from the high cost of basic commodities, a lengthy strike by teachers, and high youth unemployment, by losing his bid for a third term of office.

Fifty-one-year old Macky Sall defeated Wade, winning an emphatic 65.8 percent of votes in a decisive second-round poll.

The provisional results were published in the capital, Dakar, on Tuesday by the national election commission. As the preliminary results began to come out, the 86-year-old Wade telephoned Sall on Sunday to congratulate him.

Among the reasons for Wade’s defeat was the support his rival received from the other 12 candidates who failed in the first round of elections on Feb. 26, as well as from a broad coalition of political parties and civil society associations, notably including a group founded by young rappers called Y’En a Marre, meaning “enough is enough”.

Speaking on national television on Monday, Moustapha Guirassy, a spokesperson for the outgoing administration, said Sall’s victory can be explained by the failure to find solutions to these problems.

“There is certainly a popular desire for change, but social demands are an issue to which we could have tried to find answers,” he said.

Zahra Iyane Thiam, a member of Sall’s campaign team, credited the victory to the efforts of the candidate’s own camp as well as to a wider base of support.

“Although it was our candidate who led the final charge, this was a shared victory, because all the candidates (beaten in the first round), and the popular forces worked together to beat a system which, in our view, is at the root of the difficulties that we’re facing,” she said in an interview with IPS.

Some Senegalese also feared the Wade administration’s tinkering with the constitution for what they saw as merely political reasons, as well as suspecting that the president wanted to impose his son, Karim Wade, as his eventual successor.

The validity of Wade’s bid for a third term as president was challenged from the outset by his opponents. When the Constitutional Council ruled that he could stand, the decision was greeted by huge anti-Wade demonstrations just before and during the campaign for the first round of elections.

Several people were killed in the capital and other large cities in clashes between security forces and demonstrators.

Between the first and second rounds of voting, Wade launched a charm offensive directed at religious leaders, in hopes that they would encourage voters to back him. But this was not enough to help him retain power after 12 years as president – not even combined with massive spending and a raft of campaign promises.

During his time in office, Wade fell out with several of his closest associates, including former prime minister Idrissa Seck, who took 7.86 percent of the vote in the first round.

The man who took over from Seck as Wade’s prime minister was none other than Macky Sall – who at various times also served as president of the National Assembly and as Wade’s number two in the governing Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS).

In 2008, Sall clashed with Wade when, as parliamentary president, he summoned Wade’s son to appear before a parliamentary hearing on the preparations to host a summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Dakar. (Karim Wade was head of the OIC’s national agency in Senegal.)

PDS legislators then voted to shorten the term served by president of the National Assembly from five years to one, though this term would be renewable.

Seeing the change as aimed at humiliating him, Sall tendered his resignation not only from his post in the National Assembly, but from all positions he held in the PDS. He set up his own political party, the Alliance for the Republic (APR), and began travelling across the country and forging ties with the Senegalese diaspora to build support.

When campaigning for the presidential elections began on Feb. 5, Sall ignored the call from the broad social movement demonstrating against Wade’s candidacy in Dakar, instead launching his campaign in the countryside.

The unjust treatment received by Sall from his fellow party members in the PDS in 2008 elicited a wave of sympathy, partly explaining his meteoric rise, one of Sall’s political advisors told IPS.

“The difference between us and the other candidates,” said Abdourahmane Ndiaye, “is in the methodical approach, the strategy. Our party was fortunate to have come into existence with a large store of sympathy generated by the martyrdom that we suffered in the National Assembly. And the strategy was to transform that feeling into votes.”

On the party’s promise to lower the cost of basic goods, Ndiaye said: “The first step that we’ll take – before even thinking about the economic decision – will be a political decision. A government can make any product free of charge…”

Ndiaye said that to reduce the prices of essential items, the president-elect would trim public expenditure, looking especially hard at the country’s multitude of agencies and embassies.

As for the composition of the new government, Ndiaye said, “In the run-off, all the coalitions which supported the 12 opposition candidates joined us. This gives us an obligation to work together in governance…We cannot have transparency if we are on our own. It is working with others that will push us to be transparent.”

Appearing on television on election day, Amsatou Sow Sidibé, a law professor at Dakar’s Cheikh Anta Diop University and a presidential candidate defeated in the first round, said: “We will work together. The responsibility is heavy and everyone must help. This is a participatory approach to success.”

Wade’s defeat comes after a coup d’état took place in Mali, another West African country, last Thursday.

Excerpt:

By Jared Ferrie and - -
JAMAM, South Sudan, Mar 28 2012 (IPS)

Hamid Yussef Bashir said he walked for 17 days with his wife and five children to get to a refugee camp in South Sudan. Here in Jamam, they joined about 37,000 other people who fled from the war across the border in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.

Dozens of women and children were digging into the earth in a dried out watering hole, in the Jamam refugee camp in South Sudan,in search of water. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

“We were facing hunger on the way, and that’s how other people starved to death,” Bashir said. “And with the rains, a lot of people lost their lives from pneumonia.”

While Academy Award winning actor George Clooney’s visit to war-torn Southern Kordofan has made headlines around the world, aid agencies are struggling to respond to the conflict in Blue Nile, which has sent four times as many refugees across the border into South Sudan.

The United Nations says there are about 82,500 Blue Nile refugees in camps in Upper Nile, while some 20,000 have fled Southern Kordofan into South Sudan’s Unity state. The U.N. and the United States government have warned that hundreds of thousands more could flee as food runs out in both states where Sudan is fighting an insurgency.

Sudan’s government is waging war against insurgents in both states, but refugees and human rights groups say Sudan is also targeting civilians in an aerial bombing campaign. Last week, the British and U.S. governments issued statements demanding Sudan stop bombing civilians, and urging South Sudan’s government to cease providing military support to the insurgents.

The rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) was formerly part of the force that fought a two-decade civil war against Sudan, which resulted in the south’s secession. After independence on Jul. 9 last year, the movement officially split and South Sudan’s politicians have repeatedly denied any ties with the SPLM-N.

Andrew Omale, an emergency coordinator with the aid agency Oxfam International, said more are expected as food runs out in Blue Nile, which lies south east of Khartoum and borders Ethiopia.

“I must say it is very unfortunate that this emergency here is a forgotten emergency,” he told reporters on Mar. 22 during to a visit to the camp. “We really appeal to the international community to support the refugees who are here in Maban County.”

Aid agencies are rushing to prepare the camp before the onslaught of the rainy season within the next few weeks. Oxfam International is urging donors to provide funds before that, as it will cost three times as much to move food and other supplies into the area once the rainy season begins and road access becomes difficult or even impossible in some areas.

The rains will also flood the area where most of the refugees are camping, and agencies say they need to move them to higher ground.

Medicines Sans Fronteirs (MSF) warned in an emailed statement on Mar. 14, “Only a short window of opportunity remains before the rainy season severely inhibits the urgent provision of humanitarian assistance.”

Clooney recently visited Yida camp in Unity state, and crossed the border into Southern Kordofan where he spoke to victims of the conflict. He has since done a raft of interviews with U.S. media, met with President Barack Obama, and testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The conflict in Blue Nile has received considerably less attention. “This area here is a very difficult area to access, and probably that’s why the international community is not focusing attention here,” said Omale.

Entisar Abas el-Mak, who arrived two months ago, was waiting outside the MSF clinic with her baby. “Since I came here my child has been sick with diarrhoea and vomiting four times now,” she said.

Kirrily de Polnay, a doctor with MSF, said a shortage of clean water in the camp is resulting in cases of severe dehydration and diarrhoea, along with skin and eye infections, which accompany poor sanitation conditions.

Hy Shelow, the U.N. refugee agency’s assistant representative for protection, said the water table is so deep in most places that drilling machines available in Upper Nile have been unable to penetrate it. He said the U.N. is bringing rigs that should be able to drill 150 metres in order to hit water.

Oxfam International said it is trucking 160,000 litres a day from three existing boreholes to distribution points where refugees receive about six litres per person per day, which is the amount a person needs for basic survival.

But some refugees, including Macda Doka Waka, said water ran out at the distribution point before they were able to receive any. She and dozens of other women and children were digging into the earth in a dried out watering hole in order to extract water from waist-deep pits.

“We used to make lines and fetch water from the tap, but now two days we don’t have water and that’s why all of us shifted here,” she said. “Because of too many people fighting at the water point, we end up fetching here because we don’t want to fight.”

Waka said she fled Blue Nile two months ago, leaving her husband who is fighting in the SPLM-N. She showed reporters her “digging stick”, a mud-encrusted iron rod. Then she continued to fill her container with water scooped one cup at a time from the floor of a hole in the spongy, cracked earth.

Then she went back to her pit in the spongy, cracked earth and continued filling a container with water scooped one cup at a time.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents and - -
BAMAKO, Mar 23 2012 (IPS)

A majority of political representatives have so far maintained their distance from the leaders of a coup that toppled the government earlier this week, but several religious and political personalities have already shown a willingness to work with the new regime.

After their successful move against President Amadou Toumani Touré beginning on Wednesday evening, Mali’s new authorities have reached out to political parties and civil society.

Captain Amadou Sanogo, president of the newly-formed National Committee for the Reinstatement of Democracy and the Restoration of the State (CNRDRE), met with several prominent civil society figures just hours after the announcement of the coup d’état on national television on Thursday Mar. 22.

These personalities included the president of the country’s High Council of Islam, Imam Mahmoud Dicko, who said on television that the coup leaders had assured him they want to work with all groupings in the country.

One of the first political parties to express support for the new regime is African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence (SADI), whose leader, Dr Oumar Mariko, confirmed his stance in a statement read out on television. He declared himself ready to participate in a government of national unity formed by the junta.

Other political leaders and several civil society organisations have also supported the military junta.

The coup was carried out by soldiers from the Kati military base, 15 kilometres outside Bamako, the capital. Starting with a mutiny on Wednesday evening, they then seized control of the headquarters of Mali’s national broadcaster and the airport, before going on to attack the president’s residence, where guards initially put up resistance.

But Toumani Touré had left the presidential palace before their arrival, and his whereabouts were unknown as of Friday.

Several ministers in the overthrown government have been arrested, including Prime Minister Mariam Kaïdama Sidibé, Minister for Foreign Affairs Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga, Minister for Territorial Administration General Kafougouna Koné, as well as Minister of Defence General Sadio Gassama.

Others in custody include two candidates in the presidential elections scheduled for Apr. 29: a former prime minister, Modibo Sidibé, and Jeamille Bittar, the president of the Economic and Social Council.

The new authorities promise the prisoners will be treated well. “But while I remain at the head of this movement, they will have to answer to a competent court for their actions,” Captain Sanogo said on television on Thursday.

The coup plotters are not well known in Mali and did not hold important positions in the military command. Of the twenty-odd members of the CNRDRE, the most senior soldiers are Captain Sanogo and Lieutenant Amadou Konaré, the group’s spokesman.

In a statement read out on national television, Lieutenant Konaré justified the coup as a response to “inaction” by the “incompetent” regime of Toumani Touré and to his failure to provide the army with adequate resources to fight terrorism and the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country.

While calling on the armed forces and security services fighting the Tuareg rebels to continue with the battle in the north, the soldiers asked their brothers in arms in other garrisons to join them. They also ordered civil servants to return to work on Tuesday Mar. 27.

Despite the flight of Toumani Touré (often referred to by his initials, ATT), shots were heard in different parts of the Malian capital through the night on Thursday and into Friday.

“Amadou Sanogo is the new President of the Republic, but other soldiers still support ATT,” Samba Guido, a resident of the capital’s Baco Djicorni neighbourhood, told IPS.

While the mandate of the former president would have ended on Jun. 8, many residents of the city do not seem surprised by the coup after the reverses faced by the army in battle against rebels in the north.

Younouss Hamèye Dicko, a politician who supported Toumani Touré in 2002, said that the lack of decisive action against the Tuareg rebellion had proved fatal for the former government, which he said failed to take timely measures to resolve the problem of insecurity in the north.

A spokesperson for the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), which has waged a war for the independence of the north of Mali since January, welcomed the coup on Thursday.

But there has been no contact between the new authorities and the Tuareg rebels.

“The MNLA will continue its offensive to dislodge the Malian army and its administration from all the cities of Azawad, the natural region of Mali and birthplace of the Tuareg,” stated the Tuareg website Temoust (www.temoust.org) on Friday.

Excerpt:

By Emmanuel Chaco and - -
KINSHASA, Mar 23 2012 (IPS)

A report by the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office has slammed the government and security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, condemning electoral violence linked to the Nov. 30 elections which led to at least 33 deaths in the capital, Kinshasa.

The report, looking into serious rights violations committed by security forces in the capital alone at the end of last year, said a further 16 people had gone missing and that around 90 people were injured by live rounds fired by the police and army. All the presumed victims were civilians.

Published on Mar. 21, the report called on the government to “conduct an independent, credible and impartial investigation into all the cases of serious human rights violations committed in Kinshasa between Nov. 26 and Dec. 25, 2011, and to bring all the alleged perpetrators of the abuses to justice, whether they are members of the Republican Guard (the army unit closest to DRC president Joseph Kabila), other FARDC (national army) soldiers or PNC (national police) officers, irrespective of their rank.”

Addie Kitona, a mother of three, was personally caught up in violence that took place in Kinshasa’s Bandalungwa commune following the challenging of provisional results of the presidential elections.

“The police fired teargas at us, paying no attention to bystanders, who included children. As I was running away, I tripped and fell on top of my four-year-old. She broke her collarbone,” said Kitona. “After I fell, the police chasing after youth who had attacked them, trampled on me with their boots and struck me several times on the back and stomach.”

Annie Botendi, a law student at the University of Kinshasa, recalls seeing at least three bodies riddled with bullets lying on the ground along the road from Kimwenza, a neighbourhood in the Mont Ngafula commune where she lives.

“They were collected in the afternoon by people from the Red Cross to be buried… after having been identified by the municipal authorities,” she told IPS.

All efforts by IPS to get comment from the local authorities in the Kinshasa communes of Bandalungwa and Mong Ngafula failed.

Leila Zerrougui, the Deputy Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in DRC, responsible for human rights, said the numbers in the report should not be seen as final. “The figures presented in the report could yet be reviewed upwards, if one takes into account that there were many areas that were inaccessible due to the fear and paranoia that prevailed during this period as well as the fact that many medical facilities were ordered not to release information about victims they attended to.”

In response, the Congolese government said that it does not recognise the validity of the report, and noted several points of error. “This report is partisan, incomplete, and incoherent; it contains false numbers and it has not incorporated remarks from government, particularly regarding judicial processes that have already been opened in response to violations that are under investigation,” Minister for Justice and Human Rights Emmanuel Luzolo Bambi Lessa told IPS.

“There was a need for a joint inquiry involving the Congolese government, civil society, the judiciary and the United Nations in order to produce a credible report,” he added. “The United Nations did not do this.”

But Jean Claver Mudumbi, a human rights defender, disagreed. “The government is still making the mistake of rejecting all reports on violations of human rights. This is because it often does not have the same information as human rights defenders who are often on the ground, close to the people,” he said.

“There is no interaction between different local administrations, which themselves have neither the statistics for their own precincts, nor the means to document human rights violations committed there.”

Excerpt:

By Correspondents and - -
DOHA, Mar 22 2012 (IPS)

Renegade Malian soldiers say they have ended the rule of President Amadou Toumani Toure after seizing control of the presidential palace and the state television station in the West African nation.

In a statement read out on state television Thursday, the mutineers said the newly formed National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State (CNRDR) had dissolved institutions, suspended the constitution and imposed a curfew “until further notice”.

“The CNRDR … has decided to assume its responsibilities by putting an end to the incompetent regime of Amadou Toumani Toure,” said Amadou Konare, a spokesperson for the soldiers.

A loyalist military source and two diplomats told Reuters news service that they believed Toure had taken shelter in a military camp run by soldiers still loyal to him. The 63-year-old was due to stand down after a presidential poll set for Apr. 29.

Captain Amadou Sanogo, whose title was given as president of the newly formed CNRDR, appeared on state television to urge calm and condemn any pillaging.

Heavy weapons fire had rung out in the capital Bamako early on Thursday and the mutineers, who complain they lack arms and resources to face an uprising by Tuareg fighters in the north of the country, forced the state broadcaster off the air.

International condemnation was swift, with France suspending cooperation with its former colony while the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation expressed “extreme shock” at the coup in a country which had achieved democratic success in recent years.

In a statement issued by the White House on Thursday, the U.S. called for the “immediate restoration” of constitutional rule in Mali, while the African Union condemned the actions of the soldiers.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for calm and for grievances to be settled democratically in a statement released hours before the soldiers said they had seized power.

‘Definitely a coup’

One of the mutineers told the AFP news agency that soldiers, who said they closed all borders of the country, had seized control of the palace and that Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga, Mali’s foreign minister, was among those being held.

The soldiers also said they had detained loyalist military chiefs at a barracks in the northeastern city of Gao.

Ayo Johnson, the founder and director of Viewpoint Africa, a citizen journalist hub, told Al Jazeera: “The soldiers need to find a peaceful way to resolve the problems with the government, but it appears that they are not going to back down and this is definitely a coup.

“The rest of Africa will be quite upset and troubled, because the Mali issue with the rebels has been going on for nearly 20 years and never been truly resolved.”

Niakoro Yeah Samake, a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, told Al Jazeera that the capital city of Bamako was “very calm” despite some “gunfire here and there”.

Condemning the coup, Samake said he still hoped that next month’s elections would go ahead.

Growing anger

Anger has grown in the army at the handling of a Tuareg-led rebellion that has killed dozens, forced about 200,000 civilians to flee their homes and exposed Bamako’s lack of control over the northern half of the country.

The rebels are seeking to carve out a homeland in the country’s north.

Nii Akuetteh, an independent Africa policy analyst and researcher, told Al Jazeera that the army had been unhappy with the availability of resources for some time.

“There is a segment of the army which has been criticising the president basically for one reason; many people in the army and the populace in the south of the country feel that the president has not armed the army properly and lost key garrisons in the north,” Akuetteh said.

“They hold the view that the president is not fighting strongly enough.”

Soldiers have for weeks appealed to the government for better weapons to fight the rebels, who are bolstered by fighters who had fought in Libya’s civil war last year.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra said that the events in Mali were “direct fallout from what happened in Libya”.

He said that the soldiers who had fought along Muammar Gaddafi’s loyalists, returned to Mali, “inspired by a historic call to establish a sub-Saharan nationalism.”

Toure is a former paratrooper commander who overthrew a dictatorship in a 1991 coup and relinquished power a year later before returning to office via the ballot box in 2002 and securing re-election in 2007.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Excerpt:

By Kristin Palitza and - -
ABIDJAN , Mar 20 2012 (IPS)

Political instability, civil strife and humanitarian crises in Africa have over the past decades reversed countless maternal health development gains on the continent, health experts warn.

Maternal health is not a priority in Africa. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Natural resource-rich but conflict-ridden Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, continue to struggle with high maternal mortality rates of up to 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to 2011 World Health Organization (WHO) statistics. In war-torn countries like Somalia, maternal mortality is even higher, at more than 1,200 deaths per 100,000 live births.

“Regions like West and Central Africa, that experience a lot of political instability, have the lowest indicators for maternal health on the continent, despite the fact that most of them are rich in terms of natural resources,” Kouakou explained.

As a result, more than 550 women die in childbirth every day in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the WHO, compared to five deaths per day in high-income countries. The risk of a woman in a developing country dying from a pregnancy-related cause during her lifetime is 36 times higher compared to a woman living in an industrialised nation.

If a mother dies, the whole community feels the negative impact of the gap she leaves. “High maternal mortality has grave consequences not only for families but also for communities,” said Dr Edith Boni- Ouattara, deputy country representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Ivory Coast.

Since mothers are usually the main caregivers, their health status, and especially their death, stands in direct correlation with the well-being of their immediate and extended family. “A mother’s death has a negative impact on all aspects of a child’s life, including nutrition, health and education,” the UNFPA representative noted.

Countries even experience national economic setbacks when mothers die, Boni-Ouattara further explained: “Worldwide, we lose 15 billion dollars in productivity per year due to maternal deaths.”

But despite these indicators, maternal health is far from being made a national priority in African nations. As soon as governments are faced with political threats or humanitarian emergencies, investments in maternal and infant health as well as family planning are the first to be cut, according to Kouakou.

More than a third of women in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to any pre-natal health services today, while 70 percent do not receive any post-natal care, according to UNFPA. In West and Central Africa, less than 15 percent of women have access to contraception and family planning.

Sadly, this was largely the case because available budgets were disproportionately targeted towards defence, noted Kouakou: “Most public hospitals struggle with health service provision and continuously run out of medicines, but if you visit a military camp in that same country, you’ll see the latest weapons.”

Second on the priority list of governments is usually the fight against poverty and hunger, which is also the first of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that nations have committed themselves to reach by 2015.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day has only decreased marginally in the past two decades, from 58 percent in 1990 to 51 percent in 2005, according to the latest World Bank statistics.

As long as African nations remain poor, investments in maternal, sexual and reproductive health will remain minimal, experts say. Many countries will therefore struggle to reach the three health-related goals – MDG 4 (the reduction of under-five child mortality by two-thirds), MDG 5 (reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters and achieving universal access to reproductive health) and MDG 6 (combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases) – within the next three years.

“Most countries focus on the eradication of poverty and hunger, while maternal health gets neglected. It’s a matter of priorities,” said United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Ivory Coast MDG specialist, El Allassane Baguia.

Few governments are conscious enough of the tight link between maternal health and poverty, he said. It takes strong leadership at the country level to shift those priorities and spend more on maternal and child health, and more effective implementation of existing policies and international agreements, he added.

The right to family planning and thereby to sexual and reproductive rights has, for example, been included in the U.N. human rights framework since 1974. But such services have until today not been included in the public health care provision in many African countries.

“Yet, family planning services could reduce maternal and infant mortality by a fifth. Access to qualified medical care could reduce deaths during the birthing process by 75 percent,” Boni-Ouattara noted.

In the southern and eastern regions of the continent, the situation looks slightly different. Here, most nations have enjoyed relative political stability and been affected by fewer humanitarian disasters compared to their neighbours in West and Central Africa. As a result, maternal and infant mortality rates were on the decrease – until HIV and AIDS started to pose a threat to maternal health in those countries.

Consequently, politically stable countries with relatively low HIV-infection rates, like Botswana, have the lowest maternal mortality rates on the continent, at under 300 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the WHO.

But in countries like South Africa, HIV/AIDS has undermined efforts. Despite strong political and economic stability, its maternal mortality rate is at up to 549 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

Excerpt:

By Kristin Palitza
ABIDJAN , Mar 19 2012 (IPS)

The group of children playing in a shaded courtyard in Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital Abidjan seem carefree. But when a car exhaust blasts, they tremble. When a soldier walks past, they shudder. And they become anxious when an unknown adult approaches them.

Thousands of Ivorian children were separated from their parents during the post-election violence in 2011. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

It has been almost a year after the West African nation was shaken by six months of violence and terror when former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power to Alassane Ouattara who won the November 2010 presidential elections. But Ivorian children are still trying to recover from the psychological and social trauma the unrest caused them.

“Children were major victims of the post-electoral violence. Many heard gunfire and shelling, saw people running, saw adults afraid and witnessed brutalities, fighting and killings,” says Désiré Koukoui, the director of the International Catholic Children’s Office (BICE) in Abidjan, an organisation protecting children’s rights.

Children had to fear for their lives, and deal with the death of family members, hunger and displacement during the country’s violent unrest, which lasted from December 2010 until May 2011. Thousands were separated from their parents during the chaos. Many found themselves suddenly alone in the metropolis of Abidjan, forced to sleep in the street, beg, steal, work or sell their bodies to survive.

“We are concerned that, if we don’t swiftly implement mechanisms to ‘repair’ the situation, to socialise children and families, we will be faced with a whole generation of problem cases in a few years from now, with a generation of young adults without a future,” warns Koukoui.

BICE opened a safe house for separated children after the violence had ebbed down in July 2011. By then the unrest had claimed the lives of 3,000 people and at least half a million were displaced. Its staff tries to reunite them with their families, with support from international children’s organisation Save the Children and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

According to official U.N. data, 3,700 children were reported separated from their parents during the crisis in Abidjan alone, a city of about five million citizens. But Koukoui believes “the actual number is much higher; at least 10 times as high because we haven’t been able to even locate the majority of lost children.”

Progress has been slow, because often, parents have been displaced as well, or children are too young or too traumatised to remember their parents’ or villages names. So far, BICE has only managed to trace the families of about 250 boys and girls. “We do our best to find families, place children in schools, give them psycho-social counselling, and if all fails, place them in foster care or orphanages,” Koukoui explains.

One of them is 12-year-old Judith* who arrived at the safe house about three months ago. The girl used to live with her aunt and uncle in Yopougon, one of Abidjan’s neighbourhoods most heavily affected by the post-election violence, which has been labelled a pro-Gbagbo area.

Judith’s parents, who live in a small village in the country’s rural north, Benjué, had sent their daughter to the capital in the hope of giving her access to good schooling. But instead, the relatives exploited the girl, forcing her to labour as a domestic worker in their household. When the elections ended in violence, Judith’s uncle, a Gbagbo supporter, fled Abidjan out of fear for his safety.

“After he left, my situation got even worse. From the window, I saw people being killed in the streets. I was very scared. We had nothing to eat, and my aunt let her fear out on me. She beat me a lot,” says Judith who eventually ran away and arrived at the safe house with her face heavily bruised and cuts that will leave lifelong scars.

The girl has also been raped, but for now it remains unclear when the crime occurred and who the perpetrator is, safe house staff say.

“It’s unfortunately a typical story. We have observed a countrywide increase in domestic violence, alcoholism and child abuse due to the conflict,” explains Dalié Privary, the safe house’s programme manager.

After several weeks, the safe house staff eventually managed to locate Judith’s parents but the reunification process is complex and takes time, as aid organisations need to ensure children will be sent back to a safe, healthy family environment.

“We counsel both parents and children before reuniting them, to give the child the best possible future,” explains Save the Children protection programme manager Monique Apie. “We want to be certain parents are sincere about taking their children back.”

Due to the conflict, which has equally led to trauma and hopelessness in adults, one out of five parents were reluctant to welcome their lost children back into the folds of the family, according to BICE statistics. “When there’s violent conflict, it’s everyone for themselves, even within families. It’s shocking, but it’s unfortunately true,” says Apie.

Moreover, many parents feel they are unable to take care of their children, since pre-existing high levels of poverty – almost half of Ivorians were living under the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day – were suddenly combined with large-scale loss of income as hundreds of thousands of families were forced to flee their homes for safety. As a result, the reunification process can take months, even after the parents have been located.

Apart from supporting the family reunification process, UNICEF is working on ensuring that maltreated and abused girls and boys have access to child justice. “We are working with both the justice department and police on child protection issues,” explains UNICEF Cote d’Ivoire deputy country representative Christina de Bruin.

At the moment, few children have the opportunity to access the justice system, which together with the police force came to a standstill during the post-election violence, when Cote d’Ivoire’s army and military opposition forces wreaked havoc throughout the country.

“President Ouattara and his government have now indicated their concern about children’s rights, but it will take time to implement new policy decisions,” says de Bruin. Until then, thousands of Ivorian children will remain vulnerable.

*Name changed to protect the identity of the child.

Excerpt:

By Emmanuel Chaco and - -
KINSHASA, Mar 14 2012 (IPS)

The International Criminal Court delivered its first verdict Wednesday: Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was found guilty of recruiting children under the age of 15 to fight in a militia group in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The ICC, based in the Hague, found that in his capacity as leader of both the UPC (Union of Congolese Patriots) and its military wing, the FPLC (Patriotic Force for the Liberation of the Congo), Lubanga caused children to take an active part in hostilities in the eastern DRC region of Ituri between September 2002 and August 2003, including using them as bodyguards for himself and other members of the two organisations.

Sentencing is yet to take place, but according to lawyers, Lubanga now faces 30 years in prison or a life sentence.

Franck Luetete, who represented several victims in the Lubanga case, told IPS, “In line with the provisions of article 76 of the Rome Statute (which established the ICC) and Lubanga’s own request, the Chamber will dedicate its next session to determining a sentence and compensation for victims.”

Raphaël Wakenge, the president of the Congolese Coalition for Transitional Justice (CCJT), a local non-governmental organisation which has offered support for victims during the lengthy court case, told IPS, “The coalition is delighted with this first decision, which is also instructive with regards to all crimes committed in DRC since the ICC began its work.

“Unfortunately,” Wakenge added, “victims of rape and sexual slavery, as well as other sex-related crimes committed by Lubanga and his militia, will feel frustrated, as these crimes were not included in this case by the ICC prosecutor.”

Faïda Sady is a human rights defender with an NGO called Espoir Pour Tous – “Hope for All” – based in the Irumu district of the Ituri region. “One of my older brothers refused to join the militia, and Lubanga’s fighters cut off both his arms – he died several months later. Two of my sisters were gang-raped repeatedly by militia members. One died from the assault.”

Sady says the verdict handed down does nothing for her or her family. “The victims in my family were not called (as witnesses) in this trial. But NGOs in Ituri will continue to press the ICC to open a second case against Lubanga for the crimes and victims who have not yet been taken into account,” she said.

“The impact of this verdict is very weak,” said Guy Mushiata, the Kinshasa-based legal officer for the International Centre for Transitional Justice, a U.S NGO. “The verdict itself is not definitive.”

Mushiata has closely followed the case and submitted several opinions to the ICC prosecutor’s office dealing with reparations for victims. “By itself, this decision will still not satisfy since it could still be struck down on appeal. And it is not, in itself, a conviction with which victims can be satisfied.”

Observing the decision, military prosecutors in DRC feel that the ICC verdict has only demonstrated the court’s ineffectiveness. One of these prosecutors, Penza Ishay, told IPS, “The enormous financial and material resources available to the ICC have still not enabled it to produce a verdict in a reasonable time.”

Lubanga was transferred to the Hague, in the Netherlands, on Mar. 17, 2006, following the execution of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court; the warrant followed on a request from Joseph Kabila, the president of the DRC, to the ICC prosecutor to carry out inquiries into grave violations of human rights in the country and to open cases where the court was competent.

Ishay said that the majority of cases of grave violations of human rights in Ituri would have already been dealt with if the same resources were given to the Congo’s own judicial system.

“The ICC is not well-regarded in Ituri,” the military prosecutor said. “Instead of delivering justice, it has tried to walk a tightrope between the two largest ethnic groups (Balendu and Bahema), pursuing charges against two people from each side, even though the seriousness of the crimes is not necessarily the same, and members of these groups are not the only perpetrators – nor the most culpable – when it comes to violations committed in Ituri.”

Major Innocent Mayembe, a Congolese military lawyer, says military courts are the most effective means to fight against impunity for serious human rights abuses. “Many victims of these violations have had the moral satisfaction of seeing their aggressors convicted on the ground in Ituri where they once felt themselves to be untouchable.”

Excerpt:

By Louise Redvers and - -
LUANDA, Mar 13 2012 (IPS)

Rights groups and activists are warning of a rapidly deteriorating political climate in Angola following a police raid on a private newspaper and a violent crackdown on anti-government protests.

An anti-government demonstration photo. Credit: Louise Redvers

The effective shut-down of the paper and the questioning of its editor, William Tonet, whose mobile phone battery was also confiscated, comes just 48 hours after attempts by Angolan youths to stage demonstrations in the capital Luanda and southern coastal city of Benguela.

The marches had been convened to protest about irregularities in the electoral process including the appointment of a member of the ruling party to run the National Electoral Commission.

Although only a few dozen people gathered in each city, neither protest was allowed to go ahead.

In Benguela heavily armed police broke up the crowds making several arrests, while in Luanda, where in the days running up to the events there had been reports of house raids, threats against the organisers, an unidentified armed gang launched a violent street attack on the organisers leaving several people seriously injured.

Lisa Rimli, from New York-based lobby group Human Rights Watch, said: “We are especially concerned about what is happening in Angola because this is an election year when people should be allowed to express themselves freely.

“That people are not being allowed to stage public demonstrations, which is their right under the constitution, and that private newspapers are being targeted like this, it is very worrying,” she added.

Rimli said she was most concerned about the type of violence being pursued against the protestors.

“What we saw at the weekend was a step up from previous marches, the attackers were armed and they were aiming for people’s heads,” she said. Adding: “It is very lucky no-one was killed.”

Angola’s Policia Nacional or national police has denounced the violence, blaming the clashes on rival gangs and “hooligans”, and a spokesman pledged a full investigation into what happened.

A leaflet has started circulating in Luanda, claiming to be from a separate youth vigilante group, which says it carried out the attack to stop the protests out of “respect for the elections” and to preserve the peace.

But Luaty Beirão, a popular Angolan rapper who helped organise the march in Luanda, and who was himself struck on the head, said he and his friends had been deliberately targeted by a well-trained undercover security operation.

He told IPS: “As soon as we arrived at the arranged meeting place, we could see a group beating up random people and then they came towards us and tried to encourage us to fight back.

“When we refused to be provoked, they changed their tune and said if we went away and cancelled the demonstration, they would leave us alone.

“We refused again and then they just went for us. I just remember being hit on the head and falling to the ground and then hearing shot after shot being fired into the air.”

Beirão, 30, who needed stitches for his head wound, added: “The police were nowhere to be seen and you could tell just by the way those guys surrounded us, they knew what they were doing, they weren’t just ordinary thugs.”

A few kilometres away, 57-year-old Filomeno Vieira Lopes, the Secretary General of the small opposition party Bloco Democratico who was on his way to join the protest, was also attacked and had to be taken to hospital with a wounds to his head and arm.

Sizaltina Cutaia, from the Angolan office of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, said: “Considering that 2012 is an election year these events are indeed very concerning.

“It indicates to us the low status of political participation in Angola, where freedom of assembly and manifestation are systematically denied to citizens. It is a real threat to democracy.”

Until recently, political protests were rare in Angola where few have dared to criticise the authorities for fear of losing their job or the little stability they had found since the end of the country’s three-decade civil war in 2002.

But in response to what is seen as the government’s failure to share out a peace dividend to the majority, despite the country’s enormous oil wealth, and the weakness of the parliamentary opposition, since March last year youth movements have been taking to the streets.

As well as complaining about inequality and poor public services, the youth have been calling for Angola’s president of 32 years, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, to step down.

Beirão, whose stage names are Brigadeiro Mata Frakus and Ikonoklasta, said: “For us the big issue is Dos Santos, he must go. We want him to step down, 32 years is too long for one man to rule a country.

“The youth is fed up with what is happening here. People can pretend everything is alright but it is not, our country is not being run properly, there is no investment in health or education and many people are suffering.”

Angola is one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies whose GDP is forecast to swell by 12 percent this year.

Half the population, however, remains in poverty with no access to drinking water and the country has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world with one in five youngsters dying before their fifth birthday.

Hitting out at middle class silence and people’s general reluctance to confront government which controls the media and most private enterprise, Beirao, whose late father was a dedicated member of the ruling party, said: “People know things aren’t right, but they are too scared for their own jobs and families to stand up to what is happening.

“But for me, those who remain silent are merely being complicit and contributing to the injustices taking place here.”

Clearly sensitive to the growing tide of anti-government sentiment so close to the elections Dos Santos and his party, the Movement for Popular Liberation of Angola have been trying to turn on the charm offensive.

Dos Santos, for many years a recluse, has been making more regular public appearances, even switching his stiff suit for more casual shirts and caps.

In a string of recent speeches he had denied he is a dictator and has urged Angolans to be patient and recognise what his government has done for the country since the end of the war.

Last week the 69-year-old, whose own family is accused of mass acts of corruption, lashed out at what he called “dishonest propaganda” said people with foreign influences were trying to destabilise the country for their own ends.

Angolan journalist and anti-graft campaigner Rafael Marques, who has a website dedicated to outing corrupt government officials, said Dos Santos was clearly struggling to deal with the new generation who unlike their parents were not shaped by the fear of war or fooled by Soviet-style propaganda.

“Dos Santos is looking weaker by the day,” Marques said. “The fact that he is resorting to violence to suppress his own people shows he is losing his control.”

Beirão said he and fellow members of the protest movement Central 7311 (named after their first demonstration last year) had extensive film and photographic footage of the recent violence and planned to use social media to spread it to as many people as possible in order to raise awareness of their struggle.

Excerpt:

As Sudan and South Sudan meet for the latest round of negotiations featuring oil as a key issue this week, four ships loaded by Khartoum with southern crude are carrying their disputed cargoes to unknown buyers.

Soldiers patrol an oil field in Paloug, in South Sudan's Upper Nile state. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

Economic analysts have said that the shutdown would have a huge economic impact on the new country as oil contributes to 98 percent of its revenue. The threat of possible hostilities with Sudan over oil would also impact on the country’s current high level of food security. This month the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Food Programme warned that millions in South Sudan face hunger this year as the level of food insecurity has risen sharply from 3.3 million to 4.7 million.

When the south separated from Sudan it took with it about 75 percent of Sudan’s oil reserves. But the landlocked country is dependent on Sudan’s transport, processing and export infrastructure to get its crude to market.

Sudan has demanded 32 dollars a barrel, which includes charges to use facilities as well as a transit fee to cross its territory. South Sudan has offered a maximum of one dollar per barrel in transit fees, and says it is already paying the other fees to companies that own the infrastructure.

Officials from both countries are meeting this week in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, to discuss issues outstanding since South Sudan declared independence Jul. 9.

Discussions will include disputed sections of the border and the region of Abyei, as well as fees that landlocked South Sudan will pay to transport its oil through a pipeline across Sudan.

Letters from oil companies provided by the office of Pagan Amum, South Sudan’s chief negotiator, identify four ships that were loaded last month with a total of 2.6 million barrels. Letters identifying the Al Nouf and Sea Sky were given to reporters in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, on January 17. Letters naming the ETC Isis and Ratna Sharada were provided to IPS’s reporter in Juba on Feb. 10.

According to letters by the Petrodar Operating Company (PDOC), its employees were forced last month to load three ships with southern crude – the Sea Sky, the Al Nouf and the ETC Isis. In a Jan 19 letter, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNOPC) president Zhang Pinxian informed partners that Sudan ordered the loading of 600,000 barrels onto the Ratna Sharada by copying a letter of instruction it received from the government.

In a letter the same day, South Sudan’s Oil Minister Stephen Dhieu Dau ordered GNOPC to provide all information related to the Ratna Sharada, “including with respect to its destinations, as well as who chartered the vessel and who will be purchasing” the crude.

In a Jan. 30 letter to officials from both countries’ oil ministries, Petrodar president Liu Yingcai noted the company’s “disagreement and protest against this unilateral action”, referring to Sudan’s order to load 600,000 barrels of crude belonging to the Republic of South Sudan (RSS) onto the ETC Isis.

“This action is certainly not acceptable as the crude belongs to RSS government and prior approval from RSS is therefore needed,” Yingcai wrote.

In a Jan. 14 letter, Yingcai said Khartoum sent security forces to oversee the loading of 650,000 barrels onto the Sea Sky.

“Our PDOC staff in Marine Terminal had been threatened to be physically removed if they do not comply with the loading activities,” he wrote.

Petrodar was ordered to load 750,000 barrels onto the Al Nouf, according to a Jan. 16 letter.

Information regarding the destinations or purchasers of the four cargoes has not yet been made officially public.

South Sudan’s oil minister has said his government has a team investigating and preparing legal cases against parties involved in transporting and trading stolen oil.

“Any company involved in shipping, trading, or buying this disputed crude needs to publicly clarify the nature of their involvement, who and how much they’ve paid, and where the oil is going,” said Dana Wilkins of Global Witness, a natural resources watchdog group.

One ship, the Al Nouf, is pictured on the website of FAL Oil, an oil trading company based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, in a photo gallery entitled “Our Ships”. Calls to FAL Oil were not answered.

Petrodar said in an emailed response to questions that the company has no knowledge of the destinations of the three ships it was forced to load with southern crude, or who the buyers are.

Calls to GNPOC’s headquarters in Khartoum were not answered and the company did not respond to emailed questions. South Sudan’s oil minister did not reply to emailed requests for comment.

Mali’s political parties have jointly called on the government to hold a forum for peace and reconciliation as a way to end a Tuareg rebellion launched several weeks ago. The uprising has forced around 55,000 people out of their homes, the majority fleeing the fighting in the north of the country, but others are seeking shelter from ethnic tension and violent demonstrations in cities in the south.

Across the country, MNLA rebels have circulated images like these via cellphone. Credit: MNLA

The uprising by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) has claimed dozens of casualties since mid-January, including members of the army and the rebels, though precise numbers have not been established by independent sources.

In a Feb. 7 statement, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said it has sent emergency teams to countries bordering Mali to help meet the needs of around 20,000 refugees in neighbouring countries.

“In the past three weeks, at least 10,000 people are reported to have crossed to Niger, 9,000 have found refuge in Mauritania and 3,000 in Burkina Faso,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in Geneva on Tuesday.

“Many of the new arrivals are sleeping in the open and have little access to shelter, clean water, health services and food,” Edwards said.

The Red Cross estimates that 30,000 others have been displaced within Mali since the first MNLA attack, against the town of Menaka, took place on Jan. 17, against the town of Menaka. The rebels have gone on to attack several other army garrisons in the north of the country.

Since then, popular anger over the attacks has grown in the south. Violent demonstrations took place in several southern cities including Kayes, Ségou, and the capital, Bamako, between Jan. 31 and Feb. 2. The marches were organised in reaction to what protesters view as a “timid” reaction by the authorities against the rebellion, but in many cases degenerated into rioting.

Modibo Diaby, a resident of the southern town of Kati, told IPS that he saw numerous businesses belong to Tuaregs – or people believed to be Tuareg – were looted; similar scenes occurred elsewhere in the south.

The Malian president, Amadou Toumani Touré, has called on Malians not to confuse the insurgents with Tuareg civilians more generally. “Those who attacked military barracks and other locations in the north must not be conflated with our other compatriots – Tuareg, Arab, Songhai, Peul – who live with us,” said Touré in a televised address on Feb. 1.

He highlighted military operations against the rebels. “The army has all that it needs to secure the safety of all our people. We will continue to send weapons and ammunition.”

Also seeking to ease ethnic tension, Mali’s Minister for Infrastructure and Transportation, Ahmed Diane Semega, the following day stressed that not all Tuareg are part of the rebellion. “Of the nearly 3,600 Tuareg in the national army, fewer than one hundred have deserted,” he said.

According to a military source, 300 Tuareg fighters – the largest contingent of Malian Tuareg soldiers who returned from Libya after the fall of Moammar Gaddhafi – have been deployed with the Malian army in the areas of Kidal, Tessalit and Gao, all in the north.

These fighters, drawn from the Imghad Tuareg community, have been placed under the command of Colonel Elhadj Gamou, a Tuareg who joined the Malian army in line with the terms of a 1992 peace pact that ended a previous uprising in the same region.

On Dec. 3, 2011, well before the latest uprising, two representatives of this Tuareg community – Colonel Waqqi Ag Ossad and Comander Inackly Ag Back – met with President Traoré and told him their group was ready to give up their weapons and serve the state.

According to Bamako-based journalist Cheikna Hamalla Sylla, the presence of the Imghad soldiers is the reason that an attack on the rebels’ main objective, the city of Kidal, has been delayed so far.

Notwithstanding continued military operations against the rebels, Touré has stated that the government still plans to hold presidential elections scheduled for Apr. 29.

According to Dioncounda Traoré, the president of the National Assembly and himself a candidate in the April elections, “(The president has committed) to putting everything in place to retire on Jun. 8, 2012 in line with the constitution, after organising credible and transparent elections.”

Leaders of Mali’s political parties want a forum on peace and reconciliation to be held from Feb. 17 to 19, and they have called on the Malian authorities to contact the governments of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger for assistance in opening a dialogue with the rebel groups.

They also want the government to speak to leading Tuareg and Arab figures who have left Mali for neighbouring countries; and to the ambassadors of France, the United States and the European Union for assistance in creating the forum for peace and reconciliation.

“I can no longer stay here in Kano as it rains bombs. The gun battles rattle us… Kano is no longer safe,” said pregnant Funke Nweke of her decision to flee Nigeria’s northern state with her five-year-old daughter.

An injured man awaits treatment at the Murtala Muhammed General Hospital in Kano after the Jan. 20 bombings. Credit: Mustapha Muhammad/IPS

Nweke grimaced as she held her daughter, Nnenna, while they waited at Kano’s most popular motor park to board a bus headed to Nigeria’s south. She and her daughter are fleeing the state, as they fear being attacked by the Islamist extremists Boko Haram.

Kano witnessed the worst series of suicide bombings, bombs blasts and gun battles on Jan. 20. According to the president of the Civil Rights Congress, a human rights organisation based in the northern city of Kaduna, 256 people were killed in the fighting. However, the local police authority puts this figure at 184 dead.

Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attacks saying they did so because their members in Kano have been arrested and were being persecuted and maltreated.

“We are responsible for the attack. I am the person who commanded our people to rain sporadic attacks, because we have sent an open letter to the Kano leaders to release our members arrested for no offence, but they refused,” the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said on a YouTube video, speaking in the local Hausa dialect.

Shekau denied killing civilians in the attacks: “We are killing the police, the military and any other person who connives with them. We are not after civilians. And I enjoy killing a person, like I kill a ram and a chicken, provided that God ordains me to kill him.”

Back at Kano, despite her mother’s grim mood, Nnenna is happy to be leaving. “We are travelling. Bye,” she told IPS happily.

Nweke and her daughter were among several others who converged at New Road in Kano, and queued as they waited patiently to board luxury busses.

“Hundreds of our people, largely women and children, have left because they are traumatised with the attacks recently,” the leader of the Igbo ethnic group in Kano, Dr. Boniface Ibekwe, told IPS by phone.

“I cannot tell you the exact figures of the people that left but we are compiling names. Some have left, some are in hospital receiving treatment and some are still missing…Our men are largely here, we are not leaving,” Ibekwe said.

However, the security of the area remains uncertain. Just two days after the attacks on Kano, the country’s security services recovered more than 300 different explosive devices at various locations around the state.

Police bomb experts said that if the explosives had been detonated, it could have been disastrous for Africa’s most populous state and top oil producer.

While President Goodluck Jonathan said on Jan. 8 that the country would bring the perpetrators to justice, the country’s north faces an economic decline because of the attacks.

Kano is Nigeria’s second-largest city and the country’s centre of commerce. The Igbo community, which is being targeted in the attacks, own many of the businesses here.

“The Igbo dominate automobile, building materials, stationeries and electrical appliances businesses. They occupy 90 percent of these businesses. (If they flee Kano) it would not (be) good for Kano’s economy and that of other northern states,” an economics lecturer at Bayero University in Kano, Dr. Garba Ibrahim Shekau, told IPS by phone.

Shekau said goods being sold by the Igbo people in Kano would become scarce and a larger demand for these goods would see prices skyrocketing.

After the attacks in Kano more than 200 members of the group were arrested, though 80 percent of those arrested are believed to be foreign nationals.

“We have made arrested using intelligence gathering of more than 200 Boko Haram members, and we discovered that 80 percent of them are Chadians,” a senior police officer told IPS on the condition of anonymity.

The Nigerian State Security Service announced the capture of Boko Haram’s purported spokesman Abu Qaqa on Feb. 2.

Ahmadou Lamine has been forced to close his business selling fuel imported from Nigeria, known locally as “zoa-zoa”, because of the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.

A farmer in Cameroon. The closure of Nigeria's border with northern Cameroon has had a negative economic impact on this region. Credit: Fanny Pigeaud/IRIN

Lamine, from Maroua, the capital of Cameroon’s Far North Region, ran out of stock after Nigeria temporarily closed its border with Cameroon’s northern region. The move came after the Christmas Day bombings of Nigeria’s churches by Boko Haram, which killed dozens of people.

“Motor bike riders who used to supply us with zoa-zoa from neighbouring Nigeria couldn’t do so anymore. I was forced to shut my business premises,” Lamine told IPS. “I don’t know how I am going to cope with paying the rent on my house, let alone feed my family and pay my children’s school fees,” he added.

The closure of the border has had a negative economic impact on this region. Fuel prices here have doubled, jumping from fifty cents a litre to about one dollar. And a similar trend is recorded with other imports from Nigeria like sugar, milk, flour, beverages, sweets and oranges.

“It’s difficult,” Alima Aissatou, a housewife in Maroua told IPS. She pointed to her near-empty basket that would have previously been filled with food purchased from Maroua’s main market. “How do you feed a family with this?” she asked.

The closure of the border is not only affecting businesses and households, it has also led to a reduction in customs revenue. The interim Customs Bureau Chief for Maroua, Philemon Tamfu, told IPS that the impact of the border closure was most felt “in Limani, Fotokol, Kolofata and Kouseri, all border towns in the Far North Region where all (customs) entries and exits are recorded.”

Speaking to IPS by phone, the Customs Bureau Chief for Limani, Alain Symphorien Nzie, said that the area used to receive 239,000 dollars every 10 days in customs revenue, averaging 718,000 dollars a month. But a few weeks after the border was closed, it could barely manage to generate 50,000 dollars. Limani, a border town, is home to citizens of Cameroon and Nigeria.

“I had to improvise all means possible to come up with the 50,000 dollars. This amount is likely to keep on dropping if the blockage continues,” he said of the minimum quota that customs departments need to meet.

A similar trend has been noticed in the border town of Fotokol. Instead of the 40,000 dollars that is usually collects over the first 10 days of January, only 4,000 dollars was received.

International news agency CNN quoted trade and customs officials in Maroua as saying that nearly 80 percent of its regional economy has shrunk since the closure of the borders.

Nigeria’s borders with Cameroon remain sealed as Africa’s most populous nation fears that the extremist group Boko Haram might be using the northern parts of Cameroon as a base.

This comes after the unearthing of a cache of arms, suspected to have been smuggled in from Cameroon, in Borno State, Nigeria. The arms included AK47 rifles, pistols, rocket launchers, bombs, and detonating bomb cables.

Cameroon’s government is concerned that the extremist group could be infiltrating and establishing itself in the country. Wikileaks revealed that President Paul Biya raised the concerns in a conversation with United States Ambassador to Cameroon, Janet Garvey.

“Biya was concerned about the threat of Islamic extremism …He was beginning to worry about Islamic extremists infiltrating Cameroon from Nigeria through Cameroon’s mosques,” Wikileaks stated.

The former minister for Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Marafa Hamidou Yaya, also expressed similar fears to the ambassador. He reportedly said: “there were a lot of desperate people among the Muslim communities in the North, and Douala in particular, and some of them had unexplained money.” Douala is the country’s economic capital.

Evidence on the ground suggests that Boko Haram has already infiltrated Cameroon. In Lagdo, a locality in the Far North Region, villagers have reported that people with long beads and red or black headscarves have been combing the area and spreading the group’s extremist doctrine.

“They came here and told me that all our problems are caused by western education and western ideas,” a resident of Lagdo told IPS, as he cast a furtive glance around. “They also said they will give me a lot of money if I joined their group. They looked dangerous, so I lied that I would consider their proposal. I am afraid that they may come again.”

The threat of the group’s infiltration of Cameroon has put security, political and traditional authorities on the alert.

On. Jan 19, the governor of the North Region, Gambo Haman, said: “the Boko Haram being chased from Nigeria’s northeast, as well as thousands of runaway Chadian soldiers in irregular situations here, must be closely monitored to avoid unwanted trouble throughout the national territory.”

He said surveillance has been reinforced and many Quran learning centres were shut down, and their teachers are being closely monitored by security intelligence.

The Nigerian newspaper, Sunday Tribune, reported on Jan. 29 that Cameroon security forces had recently blocked an attempt by 25 itinerant Arabic teachers to cross into Cameroon. “We stone-walled them,” the source reportedly said.

Meanwhile, government authorities are liaising with religious groups to guard against the group. The senior Divisional Officer for Wouri in Douala, Bernard Okalia Bilai, convened a meeting of Imams and Muslim community leaders to jointly come up with strategies to stop the group’s infiltration of Cameroon.

“Their doctrine is anti-social,” Bilai said. “It is a doctrine that persuades young graduates to rip up their degrees…It is a doctrine that condemns what today constitutes the values of our society. Top authorities of the country don’t accept that such hateful dogma is established in our communities…we must be vigilant.”

But these efforts may be too little, too late. In an exclusive interview with the UK-newspaper The Guardian on Jan. 27, a senior member of Boko Haram disclosed that recruits from Cameroon, Chad and Niger have already joined the group.

The friends of slain Senegalese student protester, Mamadou Diop, say that the 32-year-old master’s student was against injustice and that is why he was protesting against President Abdoulaye Wade’s bid for a third term of office.

Since the start of the Jan. 27 demonstrations, protesting against President Abdoulaye Wade’s bid for a third term of office, four people were killed. Credit: Jedi Ramalapa/IPS

On Jan. 31, the opposition movement and local protestors, including students, gathered at the Place de Obelix to voice their anger at the Constitutional Councils’ validation of Wade’s bid for a third term. The incumbent president is 85 and has ruled Senegal since 2000.

The protests turned violent and one student, Diop, was killed. Diop’s best friend and classmate, 29-year-old Bacary Sejnane, told IPS that he saw his friend’s death on television.

“I saw a very big police car approach where the crowds had gathered, and we saw a man on the floor. He tried to get up but he couldn’t. We saw that the car ran over him,” said Sejnane. “When they said his name on television, it was Mamadou Diop, my friend.” According to Senegal’s Red Cross, the vehicle that ran over Diop was a water cannon truck.

Diop was completing his Masters in Modern Literature at the Sheik Anta Diop University, and was a devoted disciple of a popular section of the Mauride, a strain of the Muslim brotherhood with many followers in Senegal.

He had a wife and two young daughters. He loved to study and was a leader in his class and worked tirelessly to improve learning conditions at the university.

“He was against injustice,” said Sejnane reflectively, “That’s why he was at the Place de Obelix.”

Diop was a well-known student at the university, so when students heard of his death, they gathered in a group and marched to the hospital where his body was kept. The police stopped them and clashing ensued.

The avenue on which Sheik Anta Diop University sits saw scenes reminiscent of a civil war during the protest. Students barricaded parts of the avenue using whatever they could find; huge boulders, stones, and even wooden crates used as shop stalls by street traders.

Since the start of the Jan. 27 demonstrations, spearheaded by the June 23 Movement (M23), a movement of youth and civil society, four people including a police man have lost their lives and several others have been injured from clashes with police, Senegal’s Red Cross reported.

“I think that people are angry because they knew that President Abdoulaye Wade cannot take on another mandate,” said Chrystelle Ndaya a former student at the university, now an independent journalist. “President Abdoulaye Wade is old and he must go. He doesn’t have the mind of a young person. People want change.”

“It’s the first time we start to see students revolting like this,” she said almost it disbelief.

The Constitutional Council’s decision, which also invalidated international singer Youssou N’dour’s bid for the top seat in government, has many Senegalese angered.

In addition, during the last three to five years of Wade’s administration life has become progressively harder for many Senegalese. The cost of basic commodities has more than tripled. Bread, oil, gas, petrol, rice and sugar are now very expensive for most Senegalese.

Ndaya said these commodities have become so expensive that some families can only afford one meal a day.

But Mamadou Ba, who is completing his Masters in Sociology at the Sheik Anta Diop University, thinks the issue is beyond bread and butter. “I think it’s a moral issue, it’s about recovering some dignity and respect from a leader who has given us his word.”

Ba said that Wade had promised to step down from office, if Senegal’s citizens mandated him to.

“I think the students feel that if they let this one go by, without making sure that their anger is heard, it will be like agreeing to be lied to for the rest of your life,” he said.

“These protests were meant to give consciousness to the citizens, it is not calling people to violence,” said Ba, who has so far stayed away from the protests. “But I think they know that if they show pictures of the opposition behaving violently, it might change people minds about who to vote for. Senegalese are not violent people, they are very quiet.”

M23 has vowed to maintain protests until Wade rescinds his candidacy for the Feb. 26 elections.

But Sjenane does not believe these revolts, as he calls them, can be compared to the Arab Spring protests seen in Egypt and other African countries. Because he says: “Senegalese are not violent, we respect democracy and the rule of law.”

But it was the same rule of law that killed his friend. “Police are here to keep order, and it’s good that they do, but sometimes people also need to express themselves,” he added in response.

It was stones against tear gas in the Senegalese capital this morning as students protested the killing of one of their own on Tuesday evening. At least four people have died since Jan. 27, in wider demonstrations against the controversial validation of President Abdoulaye Wade’s candidacy for re-election for a third term.

Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade' has been validated by the country's Constitutional Court to run for a third term, sparking protests. Credit: Paul Morse/Wikicommons

Protests broke out immediately following the validation of Wade’s candidacy by the Constitutional Court on Friday, and a young police officer died in Dakar after being struck by bricks in violent protests. On Monday, a 17-year-old student and a woman in her sixties were killed in Podor, near the border with Mauritania, when police opened fire on demonstrators. Radio France Internationale reported that some 10,000 people participated in Tuesday’s protests.

Several people have been arrested since the demonstrations began, among them human rights defender Alioune Tine, the coordinator of M23, the movement of youth and civil society that has spearheaded the protests. Tine, who is also the president of the Dakar-based African Assembly for the Defense of Human Rights, was arrested on Saturday and released – without charge – on Monday.

Wade’s opponents argue that he has already served two consecutive terms and cannot stand for re- election on Feb. 26. The incumbent president, who has ruled Senegal since 2000, says that the 2008 constitutional amendment establishing term limits does not apply retroactively to his previous two terms.

“The validation of the candidacy of President Wade is a constitutional coup,” rival presidential candidate Cheikh Tidiane Gadio told IPS. A former minister, Gadio is one of 14 candidates running for president. “Wade wants to contest the elections, steal them, and then install his son as the leader of the country. The authorities continue to initimidate and arrest youth… The struggle will continue both nationally and internationally.”

Aïssata Tall, a lawyer and spokesperson for the Senegalese Socialist Party, promised to challenge Wade’s candidacy in other courts.

“The haste with which the Constitutional Council rendered its decision on the appeal is unconstitutional. If need be, we will go to international courts (to challenge it), because our country has ratified international accords on human rights,” Tall told IPS. “On the legal front, we are prepared to show that the candidacy of President Wade is invalid…”

Macky Sall, at one time Senegal’s prime minister under Wade, but now leader of the Alliance for the Republic party and a presidential candidate, condemned the violence and the aggression directed towards activists. “We have noted that Wade has given uniforms to individuals who have thrown stones. And the police have violently attacked demonstrators with water cannons. Wade is basing his candidacy on force.”

Another former prime minister turned presidential candidate, Idrissa Seck, told IPS that he had learned of the protest-related deaths with sadness and concern. The leader of the Rewmi Party (the name means “my country” in the local language, Wolof) condemned the decision of the Constitutional Court to accept what he called an illegal candidacy.

“It is a decision with grave consequences for peace, stability and security in Senegal. But beyond that, it is a surprising and disappointing decision for all democrats in Senegal as well as those in friendly countries…” Seck told IPS.

Ismaëla Madior Fall, a professor of public law, believes the Constitutional Council cannot ignore the legal force of a declaration by President Wade in 2007, in which he himself stated that he could not stand for re-election after his second term. “In constitutional law, one regards the president of the republic as one of the authentic interpreters of the constitution,” he told IPS.

“The statement, the presidential testimony on the meaning of these provisions is something which the Constitutional Council cannot ignore. A constitutional judge must also be attentive to the political class and anticipate the future,” Fall said, adding that people are left with only one option – to demonstrate.

Presidential spokesperson Sérigne Mbacké Ndiaye says it is out of the question to delay the Feb. 26 poll, whatever the current situation. “There is a will, on the part of certain individuals, to sow chaos in this country, but it is not is not an option to delay the poll, much less postpone it.”

According to Mbacké Ndiaye, the parties who are demonstrating appear unwilling to take part in the elections and that is why they are issuing “calls to insurrection and resistance”.

“The whole world is watching us,” Mbacké Ndiaye said. “We do not have the right to create a difficult situation in the country. My belief is that it is impossible to commit electoral fraud in Senegal because we have an excellent electoral register…” adding that the real and worthwhile battle is the one that is coming in a free, transparent and democratic election.

Radio Mega FM’s transmission tower rises from the centre of Gulu town, transmitting talk shows and the latest Ugandan radio hits to listeners across the district. But it also serves as something of an informal memorial to community radio-driven peace efforts during the Lord’s Resistance Army’s destruction of northern Uganda.

During the Lord’s Resistance Army’s insurgency in northern Uganda, John Lacambel hosted a programme on Mega FM encouraging soldiers to return home. Credit: Will Boase/IPS

The LRA opened its war against the Ugandan government in 1987. In the mid-1990s, the commander of the LRA, Joseph Kony, turned on his own people, the Acholi. His fighters slaughtered thousands of villagers, kidnapped and impressed thousands more children into his army and caused nearly two million people to flee to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp.

Acholi leaders and NGO officials, responsible for communicating to a chaotic population where literacy was low and poverty high, needed a way to begin reorganising communities and to talk to the rebels about peace and reconciliation. Community radio stations in Gulu – the heart of Acholiland – became the linchpin of those efforts.

They turned to radio because it “can reach to the very least, to the farthest of places,” said Arthur Owor, the head of the Media Association of Northern Uganda, which is based in Gulu. With one handset and one battery, presenters could communicate with dozens of people. “The net returns were really high, in terms of the message,” he said.

On the handful of local stations like Mega that were around in the early 2000s, programming cropped up to engage the rebels in a peace dialogue, to offer a forum for communities to begin discussing justice and for family members to plead for their kidnapped children to flee the LRA and return home.

Okema Lazech Santo is the programme coordinator for Ker Kwaro Acholi, an organisation of traditional Acholi leaders, who described himself as being in “the thick” of the war and reconstruction efforts. He said radio was “useful in mobilising the people. Was useful in appealing to those abducted to come back home… The single tool that really worked effectively in bringing peace into northern Uganda.”

Members of northern Uganda’s radio fraternity take their role as peacemakers very seriously. They frequently draw contrasts between their response to the conflict in their community and the Rwandan genocide, where radio was used to incite murder.

Mega, which was founded in 2002 and was soon shored up with support from the Ugandan government and the British Department for International Development, was “set purposely to help settle the conflict in the region,” according to Nicky Afa-Ei, the station’s programme officer. He has been with the station since inception.

Mega’s primary message was that the region wanted peace. And the target audience was not necessarily the community, but the rebels “carrying their own handsets” who were within reach of the station’s signal, Afa-Ei said. Mega developed programs to discuss amnesty and traditional justice, sometimes with support from NGOs, and they invited people from “all walks of life” to record messages of peace: traditional leaders, parents, even schoolchildren.

And Mega found its audience. One day, during the height of the conflict in December 2002 – two months after the stations launched – Afa-Ei was running a talk show programme when he got a call from Kony, himself.

“That’s when people heard his voice for the very first time after a long, long time,” Afa-Ei said. “It was kind of friendly, but he was blaming the government on some parts. Saying the government were not being realistic.”

That began a pattern of Kony and his deputies using local radio stations to communicate with officials – and directly with the people – until the government deemed the rebel communiqués too propagandistic and refused to allow radio stations to run interviews without an official representative present.

Mega’s flagship programme “Come Back Home” – Dwag Paco in the local Luo language – is still spoken of reverently in the community, even by employees of rival stations. The programme attempted to cut through LRA propaganda and encourage children who had been forcibly conscripted to return to their villages. The host of the programme, John Lacambel, would bring former child soldiers onto the show to describe their return. To contravene the LRA’s contention that they would be killed if they went back to their families.

Dwag Paco was key to the region’s reconciliation efforts, Santo said. It “made so many of the rebels to defect and come back home.”

Now the north – especially Gulu – is beginning to boom. The cessation of hostilities – the result of inconsistent peace talks and a 2008 push by Ugandan forces – and the migration from IDP camps back to villages has paved the way for renewed infrastructure and new business. Mega’s radio mast no longer stands out in a skyline cluttered with gleaming banks, hotels and a grocery store. Seven other community radio stations now light up the dial.

“We are now in the process of recovery and stability,” Owor said. That means radio stations have also seen their roles transition toward helping rebuild and entertain Gulu. Instead of NGO programming, there are more talk shows and regional news programs. Music call-in programmes highlight the lunch hour.

But the programming still deals primarily with the fallout from the war, said Willy Chowoo, a presenter on Choice FM. That includes the divisive question of amnesty for returning soldiers. One of the LRA’s most horrific practices was forcing rebels to return to their own communities to loot, kidnap and murder. It helped sever the ties between the soldiers and their homes. With no place to return to, they were more securely attached to the army.

But with the LRA on the run, some of those rebels – many of whom were child abductees themselves – are trickling back into their villages. Pre-recorded dramas set up situations where villages are confronted with the question of how to handle the situation. The message, Chowoo said, is “you should not retaliate. People should not pay back. People should not take the worst with the worst.”

The work the stations are doing dovetails with the fourth of four interventions – reintegration of former rebels – that President Barack Obama laid out for the region ahead of sending U.S. troops to help hunt Kony down earlier this year.

There are also issues of land grabbing as people return from IDP camps only to find their homes taken over by someone else, food security in a community that has long been provided for by NGOs and basic health care in the absence of infrastructure. Traditional leaders and community members hash out these problems in call-in shows and experts offer solutions during educational programmes.

While northern Ugandans are constantly confronted with the legacy of the past, Afa-Ei said the area’s community radio stations are trying to “forge a way forward for the future.”

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.