From the left, Rev. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jn with Mariann Bassey Olsson during the launch of the campaign in Cartagena, Colombia. Credit: AFSA.

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Apr 14 2026 (IPS)

Over 800 households in Ikolomani Constituency in Kakamega County, Western Kenya, fear eviction to pave the way for a British firm, Shanta Gold Limited, to begin extracting gold valued at Sh683 billion ($5.29 billion) on an estimated 337 acres of residential and agricultural land.

Efforts by residents to protest against the looming displacement during an attempt for a public participation session on the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) by the government on 4 December 2025 were met with police brutality, leading to four deaths due to bullet wounds, arbitrary arrests and scores of injuries.

According to the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), the incident is part of a disturbing and escalating pattern in Kenya’s extractive sector, where communities seeking accountability are met with brutal force, political threats, and procedural manipulation.

“Mining zones are increasingly becoming death traps rather than engines of community development,” reads part of a statement issued by the commission following the incident.

This trend mirrors what is happening in many other countries across Africa, where communities living in mineral-rich areas face forceful displacements, abuse of basic human rights, and environmental degradation linked to industrial mineral extraction, often perpetrated by foreign firms with full support of the political class.

According to Appolinaire Zagabe, a Congolese human rights activist and the Director for the DRC Climate Change Network (Reseau Sur le Changement Climatique RDC) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), often, people he terms ‘greedy government officials’ sign contracts with extractive firms to legalise their activities, then use police machinery to forcefully and brutally evict communities without informed consent and proper compensation.

It is based on such injustices that civil society organisations, social movements, faith-based actors, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralist and peasant organisations from Africa under the umbrella of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) launched a campaign calling for land policies that protect African smallholder farmers and communities against punitive extractive practices and land grabbing, which are currently a threat to human rights, livelihoods and sustainable food systems.

“Land is more than a resource; it is our heritage, our identity, and our future,” said Rev. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jr, the Executive Director at the Faith and Justice Network, during the launch of the campaign on the sidelines of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) in Cartagena, Colombia.

“Across Africa, our soils feed our families, sustain our economies, and connect generations, yet today, land degradation, industrial extractive practices by foreign enterprises, climate change, and land grabbing threaten the very foundation of our food systems,” he added.

In a joint declaration at the conference, the organisations observed that rural communities across the world continue to face dispossession, land concentration, and ecological destruction.

“Despite global commitments to end hunger and poverty, land and food systems are increasingly controlled by corporate and financial interests, while communities that produce food remain marginalised and insecure,” reads part of the declaration statement.

It was further observed that carbon offset projects, extractive industries, agribusiness expansions, and speculative land markets are accelerating dispossession, soil degradation, and social inequality, often excluding communities from territories they have governed collectively for generations.

The campaign, dubbed “Protect Our Land, Restore Our Soil”, is now calling on governments to strengthen land rights and protect smallholder farmers; communities to embrace sustainable farming practices that rebuild soil fertility; and youthful farmers to view agriculture not as a last resort but as a powerful pathway to innovation and resilience.

“When soil is degraded, food becomes scarce, and when land is taken or misused, communities lose dignity and security,” said Rev. Tolbert, who is also the sitting Chairperson at the AFSA’s Board of Directors.

Just like the looming evictions of residents of Ikolomani in Kenya, Amnesty International has also observed that people of the DRC also pay a high price to supply the world with copper and cobalt: forced evictions, illegal destruction of their homes, and physical violence – sometimes leading to deaths.

The DRC supplies 70 to 74 percent of the copper and cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries. These batteries power our smartphones, laptops, electric cars, and bicycles, and they play a major role in the energy transition away from fossil fuels. This transition is urgent and necessary.

However, according to Amnesty International, mineral-rich regions of the DRC are sacrificed to mining development, leading to a shocking series of abuses in the region. Thousands of people have lost their homes, schools, hospitals, and communities due to the expansion of copper and cobalt mines in the country, especially in Kolwezi, which sits above rich copper and cobalt deposits.

The AFSA-led campaign calls on governments and corporate organisations to guarantee meaningful participation of affected communities and free prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples in land, agriculture and climate decision-making to avoid conflicts and abuse of basic human rights.

“The future lies not in further commodifying land and food systems, but in restoring community control over territories, securing pastoralist mobility and commons, and supporting agroecological transitions rooted in justice and ecological integrity,” observed Mariann Bassey Olsson, a Lawyer, and Director at Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria).

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Dr Busingye Kabumba is a law professor at Makerere University. He said there is a misconception about sexual violence against men. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Feb 26 2026 (IPS)

When people ordinarily think about sexual violence, it’s of the rape of women by men. In Uganda, as in other countries, activists say men are also victims of sexual violence perpetrated by women, though males remain silent.

The UNFPA 2022 gap analysis of population-related indicators and issues in Uganda report gives details of sexual violence experienced by men and women.

“Similar to physical violence, women are reported to be more exposed to sexual violence than men, although the trend shows a decline over time. The incidence of sexual violence decreased from 27.8 percent in 2011 to 17 percent in 2022 but remains significantly higher than the 6 percent recorded for men in 2022. In the 12 months preceding the 2022 survey, 11 percent of women reported experiencing sexual violence, compared to 4 percent of men.”

The perpetrators of sexual violence against women include current husbands/intimate partners, strangers, friends, and acquaintances. For men, the identified perpetrators are current or former wives/intimate partners, the study says.

Section 110 of Uganda’s penal code describes rape as having unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman. Under that provision, only a male can be found guilty.

Lawyer Ivan Kyazze conducted an exploration study of the sufficiency of the existing international conventions and statutes in Uganda against rape that protect male victims from female perpetrators.

“I want to pose a question. Do you believe that men are raped by women? Think about it,” he asked an audience at Makerere University’s law school auditorium.

“Sexual violence against men has existed but has received relatively little attention. Because in Uganda and elsewhere, men are considered strong and dominant.”

He said for many, it is physically impossible for a woman to rape a man, and in law, it is a more serious offence to forcibly penetrate someone than to force them to penetrate you.

Kyazze, a senior State Prosecutor, suggested that Uganda’s law on rape is biased and that it needs to be changed to protect men who are raped by men.

He said rape is an international crime that is not just growing but is also highly contested and without a joint legal definition.

Rape is an act of sexual assault and a violation of bodily integrity and sexual autonomy, defined as the “non-consensual [invasion of] the body of a person by conduct resulting in penetration, however slight, of any part of the body of the victim or of the perpetrator with a sexual organ.

Kyazze explained that, typically, society imagines men as the perpetrators and women as the victims of rape.

“We need to acknowledge that there are other stories. Stories of men who experience rape, sometimes at the hands of female perpetrators. This is a reality that many men face,” he argued.

He said this abuse is rarely discussed openly.

“In part, this is due to societal stereotypes that make it difficult for male survivors to come forward.”

Being a state prosecutor, Kyazze said some men told him that they were sexually abused by their spouses, workmates, and employers, but the cases don’t get to the courts.

“Today, male victims continue to face physical and psychological harm, including anxiety and depression, and denial of justice. Such a gap within our law leaves our country with no effort to prevent sexual violence against men, in particular rape, and it encourages the harmful stereotypes that exist in our society,” said Kyazze.

According to Kyazze, the rape of men by women happens when the female abuser uses emotional, sexual intimidation tactics and drugs to facilitate the rape.

He explained that when a woman has power or authority over a man, such as in a workplace, she may use that influence to coerce or manipulate a man into a sexual act.

Dr Daphine Agaba, a lecturer at the Department of Gender Studies, Makerere University, believed at one time that a man could not be raped by a woman.

“I asked myself this question several times. How are men raped by women exactly? So to find answers to this question, I polled my male friends,” she said.

In the poll, she discovered that men were willing to relate their experiences with women who had perpetrated sexual violence.  In one case a man said he felt “raped and violated” by his wife, who wanted to have a third child.

From that and other testimonies that Agaba heard from her male colleagues, she said she started understanding something that she had earlier doubted.

However, Agaba was not fully convinced by Kyazze’s suggestion about the need to redefine rape under the penal code.

“That assertion decontextualises rape from its societal position. Rape doesn’t happen in the abstract. Rape is a manifestation of how power operates, and this power is still very largely neocentric. This power play not only affects women, but it also hierarchises men into those who are powerful and those who are not,” she said.

Being a woman and a gender activist, Agaba said she felt the debate could help both women and men survivors of sexual violence.

“Finally, men are going to start taking seriously our (women’s) concerns,” she said.

For over sixty years, Uganda has not had a definition for marital rape — the act of one spouse having sexual intercourse without their spouse’s consent.

Women have attempted to include it in the laws enacted over the past 30 years. But each time they have been defeated. In 2021 President Yoweri Museveni declined to assent to a marital rape law, reportedly because  it was a duplication of other laws, but activists saw it as a setback for women’s rights.

“In the domestic relations bill, activists said marital rape is a very big challenge. When this bill was put before parliament, the male legislators essentially laughed the women legislators out of parliament,” Agaba commented.

“They said, if you’re my wife and I married you, under what circumstances would you say that I raped you?’ By talking about marital rape, this time perpetrated against men, it is my hope and prayer that now that men want to be written into the law, to be included in the law, they will now start to understand the real plight that we’ve been facing. So my question is, now that men want to be included in the rape law, will we see marital rape in our laws?”

Agaba explained that statistics about conviction rates for female rape victims remain too low in Uganda.

“Which means, even as we are talking about men, it’s not yet Uhuru (not yet Independence) for women, not even close. If Uhuru is here, women are about 100 years away from that.  Is that a law that is working for its people?” she asked.

The low conviction rates aside, Agaba told IPS that the elephant in the room was the reality that men are being raped by fellow men, but this issue has been side-stepped in Uganda as elsewhere on the continent.

“In DRC, one in four men has experienced sexual violence. Yet, despite these statistics, few people have asked where this violence comes from. While women are disproportionately affected by sexual and gender violence, its prevalence does not make it exclusive to women. SGBV against men is most often perpetrated by men. It occurs outside the household; the perpetrators are often their acquaintances, their neighbours, and family members.”

She explained that the kind of abuse faced by men in the Congo includes rape, genital mutilation, enforced nudity, and involuntary sterilisation, all of which are perpetrated against both men and women.

Why have men not sought legal action when raped?

Dr Busingye Kabumba, a Senior Law Lecturer at Makerere University’s Law School, said rape has been defined as a crime that leaves the person alive but with a real cost in terms of life.

“That, when someone mentions rape, there’s really no questioning of what is being talked about. One can also think of the rape of men by men, and in those situations, again, there is no questioning what is being spoken of. In some cases, it’s even seen as worse,” adds Kabumba.

Kabumba explained that, like female rape victims, men who are sexually abused by women fear being further traumatised during the court trial.

“I know it’s a very traumatic experience, but then you are in this courtroom, you have a judge, what happened was traumatic, but you’re now being asked to describe it,  there’s a transcriber, there’s a court clerk, and they’re just interested in the details,  they’re not really interested in what you went through. It’s just, yes, ‘what happened?'” said Kabumba

He explained that under Uganda’s case law, there is already a challenge for women who are raped by men. Now, the idea that men could be the victim of sexual violence by a woman would be even more difficult to prosecute.

The survivor may not even be taken seriously if he does decide to report the crime.

“Is it the incredulity about the idea that a man is too powerful to be powerless? “Are we saying men are so powerful that they can never be overruled or violated?” he asked.

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A nongovernmental organization is trying to reforest areas once deforested due to displacement in the DRC. Credit: Prosper Heri Ngorora/IPS

By Prosper Heri Ngorora
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Aug 29 2025 (IPS)

The Youth Circle for Nature Conservation and Community Development is working toward the reforestation of sites where displaced people lived near the town of Goma.

The platform wants to reforest all the sites deforested by war-displaced people around the town of Goma.

Most of these areas were wooded before the M23 war began in late 2021.

When the wave of displaced people began to sweep through the capital of North Kivu, these areas were cleared for a variety of purposes, including the construction of makeshift shelters and the use of firewood.

“We see reforestation as a practical way of combating global warming and soil degradation and restoring biodiversity,” says Gloire Mbusa, programme manager at Youth Circle for Nature Conservation and Community Development.

He says that his organization has already planted trees on more than 13 hectares at the Kanyaruchinya site, north of the city of Goma.

Many environmentalists have criticized the current political and security crisis in eastern DRC for its “disastrous consequences” for the environment and called for action to fix it.

Virunga National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Credit
Yvette Kaboza/Wikipedia

“We deplore the fact that since the outbreak of the current crisis in the east of the country, protected areas, including parks, have been destroyed. The parties involved in the conflict should know that these areas have non-belligerent status,” says Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke, an environmental activist.

He refers in particular to the Virunga National Park, one of the oldest parks in Africa, which is facing what he describes as an ‘existential threat.’

The Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, the Congolese state body responsible for managing and conserving biodiversity in the DRC, has revealed that weapon activism, despoiling and carbonization are among the threats to the Virunga Park.

Congo-Youth Circle for Nature Conservation and Community Development says it wants to help revive an already ‘fragile’ biodiversity by planting trees.

“We are considering reforesting other sites, such as the concessions of the primary and secondary schools that used to house displaced people,” says Gloire Mbusa.

John Tsongo, an environmental activist in Goma, encourages such initiatives, which he believes will green up the outskirts of the capital of North Kivu.

“There were more than 10 camps for displaced people around Goma, and these camps were no longer covered in vegetation. To say that we are starting to replant trees again is a truly commendable initiative. It will play a very important role in regulating the province’s climate. This initiative needs to be carried out right in the heart of the city of Goma,” he says.

He suggests that the authorities and other stakeholders raise awareness among the population so that everyone plants at least one tree in Goma, which could go some way to solving the problem of restoring green spaces in and around Goma.

“We can, for example, tell the population to plant trees along the main roads in the city of Goma and in each plot. Thereafter, we can tell the residents to monitor the trees to ensure that they last. There have been many projects along these lines, but to no avail,” he warns.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the world’s forest-rich countries. Deforestation on both a small and large scale is putting its forests at risk, jeopardizing the merits of the country as a ‘solution country’ to climate change, as its authorities have always claimed.

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Activists march in the street of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo to demand climate justice and an end to oil exploration in the Virunga National Park. Credit: MNKF Creatives

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India & KINSHASA, DRC, Jul 29 2025 (IPS)

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) stands on the precipice of a profound environmental and social crisis, as the government prepares to auction 55 new oil blocks that cover more than half the country’s landmass.

Touted as a pathway to economic growth, the move has triggered fierce backlash from scientists, civil society groups, Indigenous leaders, and international conservationists, who warn that the proposed fossil fuel expansion threatens some of the most ecologically and culturally significant landscapes on Earth.

According to a new report by Earth Insight and its partners, titled “Forests to Frontlines: Oil Expansion Threats in the DRC,” the 2025 licensing round—covering a staggering 124 million hectares—poses catastrophic risks to biodiversity, climate stability, Indigenous rights, and global environmental commitments.

The DRC is home to the world’s second-largest rainforest and the largest tropical peatland complex, known as the Cuvette Centrale. These ecosystems are not just national treasures—they are global climate regulators, storing billions of tonnes of carbon and sustaining rainfall patterns across Africa. But with 66.8 million hectares of intact forest—64% of the country’s remaining wilderness—now within the new oil block boundaries, experts fear the irreversible collapse of one of Earth’s last ecological strongholds.

“The Congo Basin is nearing an ecological tipping point. Further fragmentation could flip its forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources, triggering climate feedback loops with devastating planetary consequences,” the report warns.

Oil Blocks vs. Protected Areas

While the DRC government claims to have spared high-profile protected zones like Virunga National Park from direct overlap with oil blocks, the report reveals that this is a smokescreen. Roughly 8.3 million hectares of protected areas and 8.6 million hectares of Key Biodiversity Areas are still overlapped by the new blocks.

What’s more, even oil blocks positioned just outside protected zones can cause significant harm. Road construction, pipeline development, and increased human encroachment lead to deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and growing tensions between local communities and conservation authorities.

The report underscores that environmental protection on paper means little if the surrounding buffer zones are sacrificed to industrial expansion.

The Green Corridor Betrayed

In January 2025, the DRC government declared the establishment of the Kivu–Kinshasa Green Corridor, an ambitious conservation initiative spanning 540,000 km²—an area the size of France. It was praised as a groundbreaking step toward landscape-scale conservation and sustainable development.

Just months later, however, 72% of this same corridor has been overlapped by newly designated oil blocks.

“The overlap between oil blocks and the Green Corridor undermines the very ecosystems the project was designed to protect. This is a betrayal of community rights, climate action, and biodiversity promises,” Emmanuel Musuyu, Executive Director of CORAP said.

Moreover, local communities whose lands fall within the corridor were not properly consulted. Now, they face the double threat of exclusion under conservation frameworks and degradation from extractive industry—without benefiting from either.

Peatlands in Peril

Perhaps the most dire warning in the report concerns the Cuvette Centrale, the largest tropical peatland on Earth. This region stores an estimated 30 gigatons of carbon—roughly equivalent to global emissions over three years.

The new oil blocks span nearly the entire DRC portion of these peatlands, putting them at imminent risk of degradation. Activities such as drilling, road-building, and seismic testing could drain the wetlands, exposing carbon-rich peat to oxygen and unleashing vast quantities of CO₂ and methane into the atmosphere.

“Even small disturbances in peatlands can trigger runaway emissions. If degraded, they are almost impossible to restore within human timescales,” reads the report.

The Cuvette Centrale is a globally irreplaceable carbon sink. To drill there would not just be short-sighted—it would be a global catastrophe.

“Peatlands are extremely important ecosystems, and the Cuvette Centrale peatlands represent one of the largest terrestrial carbon sinks on the planet. More safeguards need to be established to ensure the integrity of this vital ecosystem is maintained and industrial activities are limited,” Tyson Miller, Executive Director for Earth Insight, who is also one of the report authors, told IPS News.

The Human Cost: 39 Million Lives at Risk

Beyond ecosystems, the oil expansion endangers people—millions of them. The report estimates that 39 million people, nearly half the DRC’s population, live within the newly auctioned oil blocks. These communities rely on forests, rivers, and lands for their survival, livelihoods, and cultural identity.

Especially vulnerable are community forests, legally recognised lands governed by local populations. As of mid-2025, over 4 million hectares of such forests exist—and 63% now fall within oil block boundaries.

These forests represent not just environmental assets but legal victories and instruments of self-determination. Their incursion by oil development violates both national laws and international protections, including the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC).

Contrary to promises of economic upliftment, past oil projects have shown that wealth rarely trickles down to local communities. Instead, they inherit contaminated water, degraded lands, and shattered livelihoods.

“We estimated the number of people living within the boundaries of the newly proposed oil blocks using 2020 UN adjusted constrained population estimate raster data (100m resolution) from WorldPop, a research program based at the University of Southampton. This data uses remotely sensed data to estimate the number of people living in each pixel, which we in turn use to calculate the population under threat. Outdated and missing census data, especially in rural areas, require that we use modelled population datasets,” Miller told IPS News.

Muanda: A Grim Glimpse of the Future

The coastal town of Muanda, home to the DRC’s only active oil operations, serves as a cautionary tale. Despite decades of extraction, Muanda remains among the country’s poorest regions. Locals suffer from polluted mangroves, shrinking fish stocks, and chronic illnesses—while oil revenues enrich foreign companies and Congolese elites.

“Muanda is the least developed oil town in the world. We breathe poisoned air, our natural livelihoods are gone, and there’s no health care to treat our illnesses,” said Alphonse Khonde, a resident.

The DRC now risks exporting this failed model across half its territory.

Civil Society Resists

Congolese civil society is not staying silent. In June 2025, a Week of Action saw protests, press briefings, and international advocacy from Kinshasa to London. At the forefront is the Our Land Without Oil coalition—a powerful alliance of grassroots organisations, Indigenous networks, and legal advocates.

Their message is resolute: “This government cannot claim to be a climate leader while auctioning off our forests and futures. We have a choice: dig our grave with oil or build a livable, dignified, and sovereign future,” said Pascal Mirindi, Campaign Coordinator.

The report also contains several urgent recommendations: cancel the 2025 oil licensing round and halt future hydrocarbon expansion; protect the Cuvette Centrale as a non-negotiable conservation priority; revoke oil blocks within the Green Corridor to honour its original vision; uphold Indigenous and community rights by ensuring free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) and legal land recognition; invest in low-carbon development, including renewables and sustainable mineral extraction; and align international finance with climate goals rather than fossil fuel interests.

The Road Ahead

As the world races to combat climate change, the DRC faces a critical decision. Will it become a model of green leadership or fall into the familiar trap of extractive exploitation? The stakes couldn’t be higher—not just for the Congolese people, but for the planet.

The Congo Basin’s fate is the Earth’s fate. What happens next in the DRC will echo for generations.

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A child receives treatment at a cholera clinic in the DRC, where clean water is scarce and healthcare even scarcer. Credit: UNICEF

By Shreya Komar
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 14 2025 (IPS)

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is grappling with one of its worst cholera outbreaks in recent history, exposing deep systemic cracks in public health, water infrastructure, and humanitarian response, leaving its youngest citizens in peril.

On April 3, 2025, the United Nations released a stark warning: a fast-spreading cholera outbreak in the southern province of Tanganyika was placing thousands at grave risk. As of that date, 9 out of 11 health zones in the province were affected, with over 1,450 confirmed cases and 27 deaths, marking a six-fold increase compared to the previous year.

By early June, the outbreak had exploded far beyond Tanganyika. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 29,392 suspected cholera cases and 620 deaths nationwide, making this the worst outbreak in the country in six years. Most alarmingly, children, especially those under five, are dying in disproportionate numbers due to weakened immune systems, chronic malnutrition, and an almost total collapse of access to clean water and sanitation in many areas.

A recent Instagram post from the WHO underscored the scale of response efforts: “To tackle the rise in #cholera cases & deaths in #DRCongo, WHO is mobilizing resources for the hardest-hit areas: emergency beds, free medical care, and deployment of over 7,000 community health workers.”

Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingesting food or water contaminated with the Vibrio cholerae bacterium. It is entirely preventable and highly treatable. So why is it still killing hundreds in a single outbreak?

“The reason cholera has persisted is that we have not addressed poverty to the level that we should,” said Dr. Anita Zaidi, director of the Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases program at the Gates Foundation.

The answer lies not in the biology of the disease, but in the fragile reality of life in the eastern DRC. In provinces like Tanganyika, North Kivu, and South Kivu already scarred by decades of armed conflict, mass displacement, and collapsing infrastructure the cholera bacterium finds ideal conditions to spread.

A 2024 study on cholera risk in Goma found that the lack of water infrastructure forced communities to rely on unsafe sources like Lake Kivu, the small Lake Vert, and the Mubambiro River, which are often contaminated with human waste.

In the most affected areas, only 20 percent of residents have access to safe drinking water. Healthcare infrastructure is threadbare, with limited beds, medicine, or trained personnel to handle waves of acute cases. Years of humanitarian funding cuts have only made the situation worse especially for women and children.

Between July 2024 and June 2025, nearly 4.5 million children under five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition in the DRC, 1.4 million of whom are experiencing severe acute malnutrition. Cholera, which causes rapid dehydration and can be fatal within hours, is especially deadly in malnourished children. With their immune systems already compromised, even the smallest lapse in hydration or care can become fatal.

Still, field efforts are outpaced by the scale of the emergency. In 2017, the Global Task Force on Cholera Control (GTFCC) launched the “Ending Cholera: A Global Roadmap to 2030”, which aimed to eliminate the disease from 20 countries, including the DRC.

The strategy emphasized early detection, integrated prevention (clean water, sanitation, vaccination), and international coordination. But with only five years left before 2030, the roadmap’s vision is faltering in the DRC. In 2023, the DRC recommitted to cholera elimination, as documented by the WHO, but outbreaks have only worsened.

A Doctors Without Borders emergency response in Lomera, South Kivu, highlights the impact of unmanaged gold rushes, poor sanitation, and overburdened clinics creating a perfect storm for cholera transmission.

Efforts by the UN and NGOs have ramped up in recent months. Oral Cholera Vaccines (OCVs) are being deployed in hotspots. Emergency treatment centers are being established. Supplies are arriving, albeit slowly. But a true resolution requires structural investments in safe water infrastructure, consistent access to healthcare, and conflict stabilization.

More importantly, child-focused solutions must be prioritized. In a recent peer-reviewed article, Congolese researcher Aymar Akilimali called for dedicated pediatric cholera wards in eastern DRC, noting that most children have no access to tailored emergency care even during active outbreaks.

He also stated that “a community-based and multisectoral response must be implemented, including an anti cholera vaccination campaign, a budgeted response plan with involved partners, as well as the development of national cholera control plans, epidemiological surveillance, risk communication on cholera, community awareness, and social mobilization.”

The cholera outbreak in the DRC is not just a public health crisis; it is a humanitarian failure. It is a warning signal of what happens when decades of conflict, poverty, and weak governance go unaddressed. As 2030 approaches, the question isn’t whether we can end cholera, it’s whether we’re willing to invest in the lives of those most at risk of it.

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Africa is taking a multi-faceted approach to stemming the mpox epidemic. Credit: FREEPIK

By Aimable Twahirwa
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 12 2024 (IPS)

As the mpox virus continues to spread to new countries across Africa, triggering a continental health emergency, health authorities are sparing no effort in taking targeted measures to control the outbreak—and have called on funders to ensure that resources are distributed fairly.

Mpox (formally known as monkeypox) was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Africa CDC on August 14 after the new strain, known as clade Ib, began to proliferate from the DRC to neighboring African countries, including Rwanda.

On September 6, the Africa CDC and WHO announced the launch of the Mpox Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan, a joint continental response plan for Africa to support countries’ efforts to curb the spread of the virus to save and protect lives.

Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (Africa CDC) director general, Jean Kaseya, said at the launch that this “unified strategy ensures that all partners are aligned on common objectives, eliminating duplication and maximizing impact.”

The overall estimated budget for the six-month plan, running from September 2024 to February 2025, is close to USD 600 million, with 55 percent allocated to mpox response in 14 affected AU Member States and readiness for 15 other Member States, while 45 percent is directed towards operational and technical support through partners.

“This is an important milestone for a coordinated action between our agencies to support countries by reinforcing expertise and mobilizing resources and capacities to swiftly and effectively halt the spread of mpox,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “By coming together, we can achieve more, and our collective strength will carry us further, ensuring that communities and individuals are protected from the threat of this virus.”

Mpox cases in Africa have increased at an unprecedented rate over the past three years. In addition to zoonosis-linked outbreaks, the intensified human-to-human transmission through sexual behaviors and other factors requires urgent attention and an enhanced response, according to the Africa CDC and WHO.

To address the ongoing mpox outbreaks, a comprehensive strategy is critical for effective management and mitigation.

It also needs equitable access to resources.

Africa CDC welcomed the Governing Board of the Pandemic Fund’s recent statement on funding, in which it agreed to fast-track support to countries affected by the crisis and to develop a special financing mechanism to support countries experiencing public health emergencies—but with a caveat.

“Africa CDC acknowledges and profoundly appreciates its continued support in strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response capacities across the continent,” it said, but it also called for “speed and efficiency in garnering resources for mpox, as well as the creation of a special financing mechanism to accelerate support for outbreaks, including mpox.”

Africa CDC and other health organizations on the continent are acutely aware that the playing field is often not even.

“It is the ardent desire and hope of Africa CDC that this transformative upcoming funding round will prioritize a more inclusive approach, increasing support to a greater number of African countries and regional entities, especially in light of the limited allocation in the previous round, where only five (5) of the fifty-five (55) African nations received funding,” it said in a statement released on September 11, calling for an end to delays in the interests of ensuring that health and lives of African populations are safeguarded and prevent the further spread of mpox.

“Together, we have the opportunity to avoid the repetition of past mistakes and build a more just and equitable global health architecture.”

The Mpox Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan emphasizes a community-centered, multisectoral approach tailored to the unique epidemiology and risk profiles of each member state. The plan bolsters surveillance, laboratory testing, and community engagement and ensures the availability of critical countermeasures while building resilient and equitable health systems.

Data from the Africa CDC indicates that there have been 37,583 cases and 1,451 deaths—affecting at least 15 African Union States, including Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Ghana, Liberia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan and South Africa.

Health professionals consider a mutated strain of clade I, a type of mpox that spreads through contact with infected animals and has been endemic in the DRC for decades, to be the strain of greatest concern.

Kaseya said during the recent press briefing in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that the continental health organization was currently moving towards securing almost 1 million doses of the MX vaccine.

Africa CDC and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced on September 5 that the first shipment of 99,100 doses of the JYNNEOS mpox vaccine had arrived. This shipment is expected to launch a critical vaccination campaign aimed at curbing the rising epidemic in the DRC, the Africa CDC said in a statement.

On September 10, a further shipment of 15,460 doses of the mpox vaccine arrived in the DRC, donated to Gavi-eligible nations by the vaccine producer Bavarian Nordic. They add to the 215,000 vaccine doses that the European Union donated.

One major shortcoming often highlighted is that behaviors are directly implicated in accelerating the spread of mpox, impeding the behavioral change by people who already face challenges in accessing healthcare services in remote communities in Africa.

Prof. Jean Jacques Muyembe, a prominent African epidemiologist from the DRC who is also senior advisor to the Africa CDC’s director general, told IPS that for the specific case of his home country, mpox continues to spread through contaminated bushmeat, which a large part of local communities consume in quantities.

“Adopting and maintaining healthy behaviors is important for these communities where notable zoonotic diseases such as mpox are believed to be transmitted through bushmeat,” said Muyembe, who is also the chair of the DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB).

According to the findings released by the WHO, mpox can spread from animals to people in a few ways, such as through small wild animals in West and Central Africa, where the disease is endemic or with direct close contact with an infected animal, fluids or waste, or getting bitten or scratched.

While bushmeat in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa where mpox is endemic cannot be simply wished away, Muyembe points out that the administration of lifesaving vaccines to hundreds of millions of affected communities remains the best solution for Africa to defeat the outbreak.

“Randomized controlled trials will help us to measure the effectiveness of these health interventions,” said Muyembe.

Apart from bush meats, initial investigations conducted by the Africa CDC in the DR Congo and research elsewhere in Europe suggest that vulnerable populations, like sex workers and men who have sex with men, may be at risk.

“Well-organized standard care can reduce the mortality rate of mpox in Africa, but education is also critical to sensitize most families using the forest for hunting to abstain from bushmeat and also to practice safe sex,” the senior Congolese epidemiologist told IPS.

Kaseya points out that in addition to surveillance and diagnosis, African vaccine manufacturing seems to offer a promising and sustainable solution as the continent currently works hard to safeguard itself against future pandemics and disease outbreaks—and to ensure delays like the ones African nations faced in receiving COVID-19 vaccines never happen again.

“The only tool [for prevention] we have today in Africa is vaccine but for the diagnostic, we want to ensure that in some countries we move from the current 18 percent of testing up to 80 percent of diagnosed cases,” he said.

Since its inception, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology has been widely used in all stages of vaccine product development as a tool to assist in the evaluation of vaccine quality, safety and efficacy, especially in Africa.

“Capacity building is critical to support those who are conducting testing in the field,” Kaseya said of current efforts jointly conducted by Africa CDC and other strategic partners, including Global Fund and GAVI Alliance.

Drawing from the past experience of COVID-19, health experts are concerned about vaccine availability.

“Today with mpox we are in a similar situation (to COVID) where we need to look for vaccines because we don’t manufacture them,” he said.

Danish biotech firm Bavarian Nordic has concluded a deal with Africa CDC to ramp up production of its mpox vaccine and enable its vaccine to be manufactured in Africa in the future.

Through the concluded technology transfer deal, the African pharmaceutical industry will start manufacturing the mpox vaccines, according to Africa CDC officials.

Out of nine existing pharmaceutical industries in Africa, only one factory has the capacity to provide the mpox vaccine, it said.

Prof. Nicaise Ndembi, senior advisor to the Africa CDC’s DG, told IPS that the available evidence indicates that the mpox vaccine remains a safe and effective way to protect against symptomatic infection in high-risk close contacts.

“We need to build on current progress made to ensure that the African region is not left behind in efforts to control the mpox pandemic,” he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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A group of youths in Machinga, Malawi. During the COVID-19 pandemic, young people, especially young girls, are facing many challenges regarding their sexual and reproductive health. The world’s population of young people between the ages of 10 and 24 is at a historic high, with the majority — nearly 90 percent — living in the developing world. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 5 2021 (IPS)

With the COVID-19 pandemic adding complex layers of challenges to the issue of sexual and reproductive health for the youth, governments should prioritise documenting these effects for data collection purposes, Dr. Simon Binezero Mambo co-founder and team leader of the Youth Alliance for Reproductive Health in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, told IPS in an interview.

“There is a need for countries to document how COVID19 is affecting adolescent and young people for the time they have been out of school, which increases their risk for pre-marital sexual activities and sexual violence as they have less protection in community than in school,” Mambo said. “With data-based evidence, countries will be able to make a right plan and respond to this risk which is irreversible if not mitigating.”

Mambo spoke with IPS following the two-day virtual forum “Not Without FP”, organised by the International Conference on Family Planning. The forum hosted a wide array of panels with sessions on family planning, Universal Health Coverage and the coronavirus pandemic.

But there are challenges beyond the data collection, Sophia Sadinsky, of the Guttmacher Institute, told IPS. Sadinsky also spoke on the same panel with Mambo.

“Even with robust data, meeting sexual and reproductive health needs has been stymied by unrealised innovations in health care technologies and service delivery methods, including telehealth; the importance of these innovations has become far more pronounced in the context of the pandemic,” she told IPS.

“While digital tools and remote service delivery can overcome some barriers to high-quality care encountered in traditional health service settings — such as a perceived or real absence of privacy or confidentiality, stigma and provider biases — there remains a significant divide in online access, especially by gender and geography,” she added.

She was echoing an insight shared by Mambo at the panel where he pointed out that when the youth don’t have access to information on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), the results can slow the path towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

For example, Mambo said that a many young girls in refugee camps have very little information about menstrual health. “We may not achieve the SDGs if we do not support the powerhouse of young people,” he said.

Excerpts of his interview with IPS follow: 

Inter Press Service (IPS): You mentioned the mental health concerns that can arise from the issue of unwanted pregnancy. Can you share how that could have been affected further by COVID-19?

Simon Binezero Mambo (SBM): During the COVID-19 pandemic, young people — especially young girls — are facing many challenges regarding their sexual and reproductive health, including risky behaviour, sexual activity, drug use and alcoholism, sexual violence and unwanted pregnancies.

On top of that, add the significant levels of stress from the pandemic that led to increased mental health concerns. During this time, teenage mothers are facing any number of challenges, like no source of revenue, not being able to get a good job, not getting respect or support from friends and family members. Teen mothers often struggle with significant emotional trauma, with higher rates of suicidal ideation. COVID-19 is adding more pressure and stress to an already stressful situation. We must put in place more support mechanisms to avoid even more deaths during this pandemic.

IPS: In your panel, unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion came up quite often. Sophia Sadinsky from the Guttmacher Institute brought up there’s 10 million unintended pregnancies each year because of the lack of use of modern contraceptives. How are unintended pregnancies an issue for youth SRHR?

SBM: For one thing, the world’s population of young people (between the ages of 10 and 24) is at a historic high, with the majority — nearly 90 percent — living in the developing world. We know that approximately 16 million adolescent girls (15-19 years old), mostly in low and middle income countries, give birth each year. Complications during pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death for girls in this age range and all are unwanted pregnancies due to lack of contraceptives information and services. It is an issue because when adolescent girls become pregnant, they often drop out of school and lose the chance to develop marketable skills and obtain good employment. This impacts the economic growth of girls and their families, their communities and their countries.

IPS: Can you share how family planning in your current city has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic?

SBM: Family planning services have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in Goma in Eastern DRC. This is not new; we faced similar challenges during the 10th Outbreak of Ebola, when sexual activities among young people increased due to school closures and lack of socioeconomic support. When there is no support, youth are more likely to engage in risky sexual activities and family planning is not prioritised since there is more focus on the pandemic itself. This exposes adolescents and young people to high risk of getting HIV and now we are seeing increased unplanned pregnancy among young girls who may miss the chance to go back to school after the COVID-19.

Young people need contraceptives services today more than ever but they are increasingly hard to access due to lockdowns, COVID-19 fear, distance, costs, poor service, and lack of support from governments and partners.

IPS: How can involvement of the youth be important in addressing these issues with sexual and reproductive health?

SBM: Youth participation means better decisions and increased efficiency. Evidence shows that policies and programmes designed after consultations with users are more likely to be effective. By using youth participation, you are more likely to get it right the first time and avoid wasting time and money on services young people don’t want to use.

Youth participation contributes to positive youth development and research shows that young people who are supported to participate in decision-making are more likely to have increased confidence, make positive career choices and have greater involvement and responsibility in the future.

Youth involvement not only enables individuals to thrive, it also brings economic and social benefits for countries, because a healthy population is more likely to be productive and prosperous. This cohort represents a powerhouse of human potential that could transform health and sustainable development.

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Health workers inside a "CUBE" talk to an Ebola patient, while a nurse consults a chart outside. ALIMA Ebola Treatment Centre, Beni, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Two drugs have been found to successfully treat the Ebola virus. Aid agencies have welcomed the news saying it allows communities to access early treatment. Courtesy: World Health Organisation (WHO)

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, Aug 20 2019 (IPS)

While people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are slowly being made aware that scientists have discovered two drugs that are effective in treating Ebola, letting go of the fear and anxiety that has prevailed across the country this year will require more work.

After several months of intense research, mAb114 and REGN-EB3, two out of four drugs tested, where found to have been effective in a clinical trial, according to a joint statement on Aug. 12 by the World Health Organisation (WHO), DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) and Ministry of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

It is the first ever multi-drug trial for the deadly virus.

The deadly hemorrhagic fever has claimed the lives of 1,800 people since last August.

“This is very good news for patients,” Dr Esther Sterk, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Adviser for Tropical Diseases, told IPS. “It is good that these two drugs are recommended because not only do we expect them to improve their chances of survival, but they are also easier for medical staff to administer.”

The complexities of receiving treatment

But the latest outbreak of the deadly virus has resulted in fear among local communities. With the epicentres of the outbreak largely centred in conflict-ridden areas, communities there have been fearful and mistrustful of the virus and medical workers. Many also found the process of screening for the disease reportedly intimidating.

And on Aug. 13, residents in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province and a city of two million people overlooking Gisenyi in neighbouring Rwanda, was overrun by protestors after the news spread that two Ebola patients were been healed and discharged from the treatment centres.

“People misunderstood it, and thought the government and white people were plotting to infect us all with Ebola by letting these patients go home. It is only later in the day that we were told that these people were free to go because they were treated with a new cure that has just been found,” Christian Kasereka, an informal trader, told IPS.

In July, Marixie Mercado, United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF) spokesperson told IPS that, “the Ebola outbreak is taking place in an extremely complex operational environment and the response must of course factor in political, security, and socio-cultural challenges”.

She said that UNICEF was leading the work on community engagement. “We work with a broad swathe of influential community and religious leaders, mass media, schools, and Ebola survivors, to bring crucial knowledge on symptoms, prevention and treatment, to the households and communities most at-risk.

“We are learning from intensive, ongoing research and analysis of community feedback to better understand local needs, fears and concerns, and to adapt the response in ways that are socially and culturally acceptable. There is growing community ownership over the response, but far more is needed,” Mercado said at the time.

Greater community ownership and understanding needed to stop the outbreak

The Goma protests offered truth to her words that more still needs to be done.

Other international health agencies have the same view.

Sterk did caution that while the drugs improved the chances of survival of patients, teams working on the ground could not relax as ways to reduce transmission needed to be found.

“While this is welcome news, it alone, won’t end the Ebola outbreak. We still urgently need to find a way to cut transmission, which requires placing affected communities at the centre of the response by prioritising their healthcare needs and rethinking the current failing response strategies,” Sterk told IPS.

“We expect that using the two most successful treatments will improve the outcome for patients, but the challenges remain there: to break the chain of transmission, to improve the follow-up of contacts, to encourage people to report to a health facility as early as possible when the symptoms appear, to support the healthcare infrastructure in the region so that access to general healthcare is preserved during this difficult time.”

The WHO had echoed these concerns in its statement last week stating that not enough people were being treated. Currently people take 5 to 6 days before seeking treatment.

Euloge Ishimwe, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) head of communications for Africa region, told IPS that people with symptoms often delay or avoid going to a health facility or an Ebola treatment centre, placing their families and communities at risk.

“This also has critical impacts on our work with communities. If communities are engaged and understand the treatment as well as see more people surviving from the disease, they are more likely to seek health care early,” Ishimwe said, adding that the findings were a pinnacle moment in the Ebola response, as it allowed communities to access early treatment.

MSF has worked alongside several partners under the supervision of the WHO and took part in the implementation of the trials while supporting the Ebola treatment centres in Katwa and Butembo between January and February this year.

The study is part of the emergency response in the DRC, in collaboration with a broad alliance of partners, including MSF, the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA), the International Medical Corps (IMC), INRB and NIAID, which is part of the United States’ National Institutes of Health.

The study has since stopped and the successful drugs are being administered to all those affected.

“We must move forward to implement the outcomes of this research. We will continue to conduct rigorous research with our partners. We’ll incorporate those findings into the outbreak response through a variety of prevention and control strategies,” Dr Mike Ryan, WHO Executive Director for Emergencies Programme, had said in a statement.

What’s next? 

Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), and a co-discoverer of Ebola in 1976, said that the city of Goma was now out of danger since about 200 contacts and suspected cases have been identified. “We are waiting for the latest results and monitoring as the points of entry to the city are being reinforced.”

IFRC Africa’s Ishimwe said the Ebola outbreak was far from over. “This news doesn’t mean it’s over – there is still a lot of work to do. We must stay the course until the last case is treated and the region is declared Ebola-free.”

But Anita Masudi, a resident from Butembo, North Kivu, one of the epicentres of the Ebola outbreak, is relieved.

She told IPS: “Oh yes, we are very happy about what’s happening out there though I’m not sure if  everyone can now relax hoping that it’s the end of Ebola in the North Kivu. Nevertheless, I’m not afraid any more.”

The DRC has the world’s second largest rainforest, about 135 million hectares, which is a powerful bulwark against climate change. Credit: Forest Service photo by Roni Ziade

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
INONGO, Democratic Republic of Congo, Apr 17 2018 (IPS)

Thousands of logs loaded into makeshift boats at the port of Inongo at Lake Mai-Ndombe stand ready to be transported to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Inongo is the provincial capital of the Mai-Ndombe Province, a 13-million-hectare area located some 650 km northeast of Kinshasa. The logs have been illegally cut from the Mai-Ndombe forest, an area of 10 million hectares, which has some trees measuring between 35 and 45 meters.“Evicting the guardians of the forest risks losing the forest." --Marine Gauthier

Destined for overseas export

“We witness this kind of spectacle every day, whereby tons and tons of logs and timber find their way to the capital either via the Congo River or by road, where they will eventually be shipped overseas, or just sold to the black market,” environment activist Prosper Ngobila told IPS.

Mbo, the truck driver who brought the load, confirmed: “This stock and others that are already gone to the capital are destined for overseas export. I’m only a transporter, but I understand that the owner of this business is a very powerful man, almost untouchable.”

Thousands of logs cut from trees 20 meters in height are currently lying in the Mai-Ndombe forest waiting to be hauled off, while thousands more have been left there to rot for years, Ngobila added.

“It’s shocking to say the least,” he said.

Rich in natural resources

The forests of Mai-Ndombe (“black water” in Lingala) are rich in rare and precious woods (red wood, black wood, blue wood, tola, kambala, lifake, among others). It is also home to about 7,500 bonobos, an endangered primate and the closest cousin to humans of all species, sharing 98 percent of our genes, according to the WWF.

The forests constitute a vital platform providing livelihoods for some 73,000 indigenous individuals, mostly Batwa (Pygmies), who live here alongside the province’s 1.8 million population, many of whom with no secure land rights.

Recent studies also have revealed that the province – and indeed the forests – boasts significant reserves of diamond, oil, nickel, copper and coal, and vast quantities of uranium lying deep inside the Lake Mai-Ndombe.

Efforts to save the forests

The WWF and many environmental experts, who deplore the gradual destruction and degradation of these forests for their precious wood and for the benefit of agriculture, continue to plead and lobby for their protection.

The DRC has the world’s second largest rainforest, about 135 million hectares, which is a powerful bulwark against climate change.

In an effort to save these precious forests, the World Bank in 2016 approved DRC’s REDD+ programmes aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fight forest’s deforestation and degradation, which it would fund to the tune of 90 million dollars annually.

The projects, which are currently estimated at 20, have since transformed the Mai-Ndombe Province into a testing ground for international climate schemes. And as part of the projects, indigenous and other local people caring for the forests and depending on them for their livelihoods were supposed to be rewarded for their efforts.

Flaws and fiasco

However, Marine Gauthier, a Paris-based expert who authored a report on the sorry state of the Mai-Ndombe forest, seems to have found serious flaws in these ambitious programmes.

The report, released a few days before the International Day of Forests on March 21 by the Rights and Resources’ Initiative (RRI)), cited weak recognition of communities’ land rights, and recommended that key prerequisites should be addressed before any other REDD+ funds are invested.

In the interim, it said, REDD+ investments should be put on hold.

Gauthier, who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to stop the funding from doing more damage to the people of the forest, told IPS in the aftermath of the report’s release, “In DRC and more specifically in the Mai-Ndombe, the history of natural resources management has always been done at the expense of local communities.

“Industrial logging concessions have been granted on their traditional lands without their consent and destroyed their environment without any form of compensation, and protected areas have been established on their lands prohibiting them to access to the forest where they hunt, gather, conduct traditional rituals, hence severing them from their livelihood and culture – again, without their consent.”

Struggle for landless peasants

Under the DRC’s 2014 Forest Code, indigenous people and local communities have the legal right to own forest covering an area of up to 50,000 hectares.

Thirteen communities in the territories of Mushie and Bolobo in the Mai-Ndombe province have since asked for formal title of a total of 65,308 hectares of land, reports said, adding that only 300 hectares have been legally recognised for each community – a total of only 3,900 hectares.

Alfred Mputu, a 56-year-old small scale forest farmer who is among the people still waiting for a formal title, told IPS: “I have been working and living in this land for decades, but as long as I don’t have a formal title that gives me the right to own it, I wouldn’t say it belongs to me.

“What if the government decides to sell it to foreign companies or to some rich and powerful people? Where will we go to live?”

The consequences of these communities living in and around these forests with no secured land rights could be dire, according to experts.

Zachary Donnenfeld, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) senior researcher for African futures and innovation, told IPS: “They could have their land sold out from under them by the government, likely to a private multinational company.

“Even if they are allowed to stay on their land, the environmental degradation caused by this industry could cause a noticeable deterioration in the quality of life for people in the area.”

Pretoria-based Donnenfeld added: “My guess is that the government is more interested in selling these resources to multinationals than it in seeing it benefit the community.

“To be fair, the government could be trying to sort out competing claims among the local groups. There could have been some overlap, for example communities bidding for the best land, and the government could be deciding what’s fair based on historical use or something. That said, my guess is that communities won’t get most of this land – at least in a secured land rights sense.”

Poverty and conflicts

Gauthier pointed out that these situations create poverty and conflicts between project implementers and communities, as well as between communities.

“Instead, when communities get secured land rights and are empowered to manage their lands themselves, studies show that it is the best way to protect the forest and even more efficient than government-managed protected areas.

“REDD+ opens the door to more land-grabbing by external stakeholders appealed by carbon benefits. Local communities’ land rights should be recognised through existing legal possibilities such as local community forest concessions so that they can keep protecting the forest, hence achieving REDD+ objectives.”

Gauthier said if their land rights are not secured, they can get evicted, as has already happened elsewhere in the country, such as South Kivu in the Kahuzi Biega National Park where 6,000 pygmies were expelled.

“Evicting the guardians of the forest risks losing the forest, when enabling them to live in and protect the forest as they have always done is the best way to keep these forests standing.”

Many observers say situations such as these impact negatively on the most vulnerable – women and children – who are already bearing the brunt of a country torn apart by dictatorship, economic mismanagement, corruption and two decades of armed conflict.

Chouchouna Losale, vice-coordinator of the Coalition of Women for the Environment and Sustainable Development in the DRC, told IPS that a humanitarian crisis has ensued in the Mai-Ndombe Province after the savannahs donated to women were ‘given’ to an industrial logging company.

“There are now cases of malnutrition in the area,” Losale said.

The Coalition of Women for the Environment and Sustainable Development advocates for the recognition of rights and competence of women in general, and aboriginal women in particular, in the Congolese provinces of Mai-Ndombe and Equateur.

“I urge the government to advance the process of land reform in order to provide the country with a clear land policy protecting forest-dependent communities,” Losale said, adding that proper consultation with communities should be done to avoid conflict.

Displaced women at the Simba Mosala Site in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo. Credit: Badylon Kawanda Bakiman/IPS

By Badylon Kawanda Bakiman
KIKWIT, DR Congo, Mar 4 2018 (IPS)

The numbers are hard to fathom. Nearly two million people driven from their homes in 2017 alone. The worst cholera epidemic of the past 15 years, with over 55,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths. Countless others killed, maimed or sexually assaulted.

The human costs of the ongoing crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo are borne disproportionately by women and children, whose homes have been pillaged and burned, who are not in school and thus vulnerable to soldier recruitment, and who have now been left with almost nothing.“These are not the same conflicts we have been seeing for the last twenty years." --Jan Egeland

Charlotte Ukuba, 60, fled to Site Etat at Kikwit, Kwilu Province in the southwest of DR Congo.

‘’I’m living now outside with my eight children,” Ukuba told IPS. “My husband was killed last year by the Kamwina Nsapu’s violence in Kasai province. When I came here, I was living first in a church with other displaced persons. But last week, a pastor chased us away. I have no money and need clothes for my children.”

Her eldest daughter is suffering from malaria. ‘’There are no drugs for this girl. I’m calling for help,” she added.

Violence broke out in Kasai in August 2016 following the uprising of local militia in Kasai Central. The crisis has been characterized by repeated clashes between militias and local security forces, which have subsequently generated inter-community conflicts.

Another displaced woman named Rose Thimbangula died at the age of 47 on Feb. 14 in Nzinda commune in Kikwit. The cause of death was tuberculosis complicated by fistula due to sexual violence. She had no money for medicine.

Dressed in a long black dress, Marie Ntumbala, 37, sleeps on the floor of a small room in Mweka, Kasai province. She is originally from a village called Tutando, 150 kilometers from Tshikapa, but was forced out by conflict. Ntumbala was fortunate enough to be taken in by a local family. But she says she is still living on the edge.

“When I’m ill, I can’t go to the hospital because I’m penniless. The Congolese government must help all the displaced persons in our country,” she said.

DR Congo has some 4.5 million internally displaced people, the largest number in Africa. Elections scheduled for 2017 were postponed to the end of this year, as political instability and clashes between soldiers and militias continues to escalate. An estimated 120 armed groups are operating in eastern DR Congo alone.

Red Cross workers provide a hot meal to IDPs at the Kanzombi Site in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Credit: Badylon Kawanda Bakiman/IPS

Humanitarian actors launched the largest ever funding appeal for the country this year, asking for 1.68 billion dollars to assist 10.5 million people. Only half of the 812.5 million dollars appealed for in 2017 was funded.

Brigitte Kishimana is 28 years old and six months pregnant. She lives at the Moni Site in Kalemi, Tanganyika province in the southeast. ‘’I need prenatal care,” she said. “Several other pregnant women at the sites need it too. If not, their lives will be in danger. Last year, four displaced women died during pregnancy or childbirth,” she told IPS.

Georgette Bahire, a 45-year-old farmer in Sud-Kivu province, fled Lulumba village on June 29, 2017. Fighting between government soldiers and the Mai-Mai, an armed group, drove her from her land. She was taken in by a family in the city of Kibanga.

“Humanitarian workers helped us in 2017 with food and some drugs. But the needs are still great,” she said.

Since the beginning of this year, armed conflicts have continued to plague the country, particularly in the areas of Rutshuru, Masisi, Walikale, South-Lubero and Beni. The gradual withdrawal of humanitarian aid workers from these areas has amplified the vulnerability of people affected by the humanitarian crisis, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a September 2017 report.

Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, at an IDP camp in DRC. Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council

“The crisis in DR Congo has deteriorated exponentially over the last two years,” Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told IPS in an interview. “These are not the same conflicts we have been seeing for the last twenty years. Regions that were normally peaceful and stable areas of the country such as the Grand Kasai region and Tanganyika have now become hotbeds of unrest, with intercommunal violence displacing hundreds of thousands.”

“The fighting in the Kivus and Ituri is pushing the conflict in DR Congo closer and closer to a regional humanitarian crisis as tens of thousands of people have had to flee their homes into neighbouring countries like Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia. A fresh appeal is necessary because while humanitarian needs are exploding and assistance is not able to meet the pace of needs.”

Egeland called on the international community to prioritize the humanitarian crisis in DR Congo and step up their efforts to help the 13.1 million people in need of assistance.

“If not,” he warned, “there will be fatal consequences for the country and possibly for the region.”

IOM is working to provide durable solutions for 5,973 IDP households in the North-Kivu province.

‘’Currently, IOM is helping 77 displaced women suffering from fistulas caused by sexual violence,” IOM Programme Officer Jean-Claude Bashirahishize told IPS. “In 2017, IOM received 205 cases of sexual violence in 12 sites,” he said, adding that cultural taboos made it difficult for women to talk about what had happened to them.

IOM helps victims of sexual violence get economic assistance, but also to train in livelihood activities so they can become self-sufficient.

‘’Insecurity is the greatest barrier to IOM accessing areas where armed groups are fighting government military forces,” Bashirahishize added.

Patrice Mushidinima, a civil society leader at Bukavu, the county seat of Sud-Kivu province, confirmed this, telling IPS, “Sud-Kivu province has 33 distinct armed groups operating in the area.”

In October 2017, the Congolese government and FAO helped more than 20,000 internally displaced persons, of whom about whom 70 percent were women and children at Kikwit, Kwilu province. But the situation is growing increasingly dire.

‘’Farmers who fled due to conflict have missed three consecutive planting seasons. This has left people with almost nothing to eat. Food assistance is failing to fill the gap. Only 400,000 out of the 3.2 million severely food insecure people in Kasai received assistance in December. More than 750,000 are still displaced,” FAO, UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) warned in a statement.

‘’IDPs have rights that need to be respected by the government and other authorities in the country. The Congolese Constitution claims that human life is sacred,” Valentin Mbalanda, a human rights activist in DR Congo, told IPS.

The European Commission, United Nations, and Dutch government will co-host a pledging conference in April. Jan Egeland said that international donors must give the same attention and priority to DR Congo that they do comparable crises around the globe.

“That means they must put their muscle and weight behind a successful donor conference and fulfill any pledges made. Donors must also look at needs on the ground and not just the bottom line. The DR Congo crisis of 2018 is not what is was in 2000 or 2005,” he said.

“Lastly, the international community must acknowledge the consequence of doing nothing. The stakes in DR Congo are high if inaction is the route we choose. There could be mass loss of life and humanitarian neglect could destabilize the entire region. This is a crisis of conscience that the world cannot afford to ignore.”

Excerpt:

Syrian refugee children learn to survive at a camp in north Lebanon. Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 2 2017 (IPS)

The UN has made its largest appeal to work towards reaching the more than 135 million people across the world in need of humanitarian assistance and protection.

Upon comprehensively assessing world humanitarian needs, the UN found that the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance has increased by more than 5 percent.

As a result, the institution has launched its strategic humanitarian response plans which aim to reach 91 million of the most vulnerable with food, shelter, health care, and education in 2018.

The ambitious plan will require a record 22.5 billion dollars, slightly higher than the 22.2 billion appeal made in 2017.

“Investing in coordinated response plans is a sound choice. It delivers tangible and measurable results, and has a proven track record of success,” said Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock.

In 2017, donors provided a record level of funding of 13 billion dollars to help humanitarian agencies reach and save tens of millions of people, including those who experienced unprecedented famines in four different countries.

However, 46 percent of the 22.2-billion-dollar appeal remains unfunded.

“Humanitarians can only respond to the growing needs with the generous support of our donors,” said Lowcock during a press conference.

CEO of Save the Children Helle Thorning-Schmidt echoed similar sentiments, noting the need for NGOs to use funding more effectively, as well as donor governments to invest in long-term development.

“[We] need governments and institutions to take a longer term approach by tackling the cause of these crises as well as the symptoms. By brokering peace agreements, investing in education, helping communities build resilience to climate shocks, and speaking up when people are persecuted. Without this, we will continue to see a record level of suffering,” she said.

“There are very few humanitarian crises that can be solved by humanitarian interventions alone,” Lowcock reiterated.

The crisis in Yemen continues to be the most urgent and will require a scaled up response in 2018.

Over 22 million Yemenis, representing over 70 percent of the population, require humanitarian assistance. This includes the 7 million who are on the brink of famine, which has only exacerbated since the Saudi-led coalition imposed a blockade.

Though the blockade has been partially lifted, Lowcock urged for a complete reversal in order to avoid an even bigger catastrophe.

Humanitarian needs will also continue to be high in Syria in 2018 unless a political solution is reached.

As hostilities are ongoing, access to those with the most need still remains constrained, particularly to the over 900,000 in UN-declared besieged areas and almost 3 million living in hard-to-reach areas.

The proportion of the population living in extreme poverty in the Middle Eastern nation has doubled from almost 34 percent before the conflict to almost 70 percent today. Limited access to income and livelihood opportunities has doubled the number of people at risk of food insecurity.

Lowcock pointed to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo as among the most neglected, with only 40 percent of its appeal funded.

The increase in violence, which is expected to worsen, forced almost 2 million people to flee their homes in 2017, bringing to the total number of internally displaced persons to over 4 million—the highest number of any country on the African continent.

As the majority of the world’s humanitarian crises are driven by conflict, Thorning-Schmidt urged for action to help protect the most vulnerable, including children.

“If we don’t do anything extraordinary, we will end up stealing these children’s futures twice,” she said. “We have to put even more pressure on the global community and on warring parties to make peace.”

Families who fled militia attacks in Kasai Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo arrive at the newly established Lóvua settlement in northern Angola. Credit: UNHCR/Rui Padilha

By Roshni Majumdar
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 2017 (IPS)

The UN’s refugee agency is relocating more than 33,000 Congolese refugees from overcrowded temporary shelters in northern Angola to a more permanent establishment in Lóvua.

From April this year, Angola witnessed an influx of refugees—who were fleeing violence in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo—to its Lunda Norte province. The government rushed to manage the situation by setting up temporary centers in Cacanda and Mussunge.

From the very beginning, authorities in Angola deliberated on questions of a more permanent settlement to ensure stability within the country.

“The centers quickly became overcrowded and the situation became very difficult. The government began working on setting up Lóvua two months ago,” Margarida Loureiro, who works as an external relations officer at the UN Field Office in Dundo, the provincial capital of Lunda Norte, told IPS.

Not all refugees who have biometrically registered—and all 33,142 have—chose to live in the temporary centers. Many lived with other host communities across Lunda Norte. Unintentionally, this allowed the government to relocate, for instance, roughly 400 families from Mussunge, and close the shelter quickly.

Now, the UN refugee agency and government authorities, through town hall meetings, have brought attention to a more cohesive space for all Congolese refugees in Lóvua.

Lóvua, which is located 100 kms (or 62 miles) from the DRC border, has been bracketed into nine zones. Every zone is divided by nine villages and every village is divided by 72 plots of land. Each village can host a maximum of 360 people. When families first arrive at the shelter, they are assisted with food and blankets. After a 24-hour period of assistance, they are sent to their plot of land where they work to build their own homes.

Still, funding the project, in spite of an interagency appeal by the UN in June for 65.5 million dollars, has had dismal results—only 32 percent of the money has come through.

Agencies are predicting that an estimated 50,000 Congolese refugees will need help by the end of the year.

“Although the number of refugee arrivals have swindled at this time of the year, the government has kept its borders open. To ensure Lóvua’s sustainability, we still need greater funding,” said Margarida.

Angola is a signatory to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and has historically received refugees from the DRC. Before the influx in April, Angola hosted as many as 13,400 refugees from DRC.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, appointed a team of three international experts yesterday to collect information and raise awareness about grave atrocities in the ongoing conflict in the remote Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Security Council observes a moment of silence in memory of two UN experts who were killed recently while monitoring the sanctions regime in the Kasaï Central region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Credit: UN Photo

Central Kasai has been mired in a conflict between government forces and local militias called Kamuina Nsapu since August 2016. The conflict, which has escalated in recent months, garnered international attention when two U.N. experts in the region were killed in March 2017.

The conflict intensified in the run up to the elections of December 2016, when government security forces clashed with demonstrators who contested the president’s bid to stay in power beyond his term ending in 2016, and killed 50 people. Hundreds were jailed, and media outlets were banned.

Ever since, the situation has only become worse.

Newer armed groups like Bana Mura have emerged to fight the Congolese army and police. They have carried out brutal attacks against targeted civilians of Luba and Lulua ethnic groups, killing hundreds and burning villages. Small children have been gravely wounded from machete attacks, and pregnant women have been cut open.

Victims have speculated that members of the Congolese army have also been part of these horrific killings.

Today, as many as 3,300 people have died, and 1.3 million people have been displaced within the country. In Angola alone, more than 30,000 people have been registered as refugees as thousands more stream into the central African country every day. Some 42 mass graves have been documented by the Joint Human Rights Office.

The atrocities committed against civilians have put pressure on the UN, which adopted the UN Human Rights Council resolution on June 22, 2017.

In the resolution, the Council expressed its grave concerns about the recurrent violence and the “recruitment and use of child soldiers, sexual and gender-based violence, destruction of houses, schools, places of worship, and State infrastructure by local militias, as well as of mass graves.”

The Council puts the newly appointed team in charge of collecting information, determining facts and circumstances, and to forwarding “the judicial authorities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo the conclusions of this investigation in order to establish the truth and to ensure that the perpetrators of deplorable crimes are all accountable to the judicial authorities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The team includes Bacre Ndiaye, a Senegal national, Luc Côté, a Canadian who has worked on human rights violations in the DRC, and Mauritania’s Fatimata M’Baye.

A comprehensive report with the findings will be presented in June 2018, at the 38th session of the Human Rights Council.

Capoeira for peace in DRC. Credit: Stefano Toscano

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANIERO, Brazil, Apr 3 2017 (IPS)

On the earthen floor, to the sound of a single-string percussion instrument called a Berimbau, Congolese children stand in a circle practicing rhythmic movements with their arms and feet and chanting.

They are doing Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that merges the practice of sports, acrobatics, music and popular culture.This Afro-Brazilian cultural practice, simultaneously a fight and a dance, functions as an affirmation of mutual respect between communities.

It was started in Brazil by the descendants of African slaves, and in 2014 Capoeira was recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This Afro-Brazilian cultural practice, simultaneously a fight and a dance, functions as an affirmation of mutual respect between communities and individuals promoting social integration and the memory of resistance.

Capoeira has been used as a powerful tool to help demobilized children and adolescents from armed groups and victims of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). With the practice comes self-confidence, emotional strengthening, community-building, overcoming gender differences, and reducing inequalities.

Independent Brazilian journalist Fabíola Ortiz and photographer/videomaker Flavio Forner intend to visit in loco how Capoeira is being used with Congolese children in North Kivu.

Both media professionals recently launched an in-depth reporting project that aims to report on the benefits of this martial art to heal trauma. The duo plan to immerse themselves in the universe of Brazilian Capoeira in the DRC.

Forner and Ortiz are dedicated to the coverage of development and human rights. They believe in the role of independent in-depth journalism to promote public debate, encourage change and keep the UN Sustainable Development Goals on the global agenda.

Capoeira for peace in DRC. Credit: Stefano Toscano

“There is a need for groundbreaking and innovative storytelling approaches to report on conflict and trauma. Information has a powerful role in defusing tension, reducing conflicts, and contributing to the healing process of traumatic events,” said Ortiz.

Independent journalism may act as unifier in a polarized society and has a pivotal role in conflict prevention, management and resolution, they believe.

Capoeira in North Kivu

Twice a week, girls at the Heal Africa hospital in central Goma, North Kivu’s capital, are taught Capoeira. Boys at the Transit and Guidance Centre (CTO) run by the Concerted Action for Disadvantaged Young People and Children (CAJED) also learn this martial art. The CTO is a place for helping the reintegration into society of child victims of violence and who have been demobilized from armed gangs.

This centre for vulnerable children directs its efforts towards demobilizing, supporting and reintegrating children into their families. Partnering with UNICEF since 2003, CAJED has hosted more than 11,000 children removed from armed groups of the DRC.

Since August 2014, around 40 children join Capoeira classes on a weekly basis. With the support of UNICEF, the Brazilian Embassy in Kinshasa, AMADE-Mondiale and HSH Princess Caroline of Monaco, this initiative led by a Brazilian Master Flavio Saudade introduces children to the practice.

In a war-torn country with ethnic roots and embedded with commercial interests, it is crucial to rebuild community ties and restore a culture of peace.

“Capoeira is a social technology developed in Brazil from a cultural tradition of African origin. Its use in conflict zones to reduce violence is a recent phenomenon with encouraging results,” stressed the Brazilian Ambassador to the D.R.C Paulo Uchôa Ribeiro when the initiative started in 2014.

So far, the initiative has benefitted around 3,000 children, according to Flavio Saudade, a Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF and a Capoeira master.

“We are trying to address a serious problem: the forced child recruitment. Today I see that Capoeira has a great mission, the one of building a society free of so many violence. We hear testimonies from children who went through forced military trainings and were obliged to kill their parents and commit grave crimes,” said Saudade.

Instead of carrying an AK-47 rifle, Congolese children are now taught how to play a Berimbau. “How many lives we might save when we teach them how to play an instrument rather than shooting a weapon,” he said.

Political Instability

The conflict in the DRC officially ended in 2002 with a peace agreement, but this war-torn country with 77 million people in Central Africa still struggles to heal the wounds from armed clashes that perpetuate to the present day. Around six million people lost their lives. The current fighting continues to be characterized by violence and brutality against civilians, causing waves of internally displaced persons. The conflict generated a mass exodus of 1.7 million people.

Despite being one of the richest countries with diamond, gold, copper, cobalt and zinc, the DRC is among the world’s least developed nations. Its abundant land, water, biodiversity and minerals have fueled longstanding tensions. The legacy of years of atrocities, instability and widespread violence resulted in more than half of its population living below the poverty line.

The instability in the country has awaken recently with Joseph Kabila’s presidential mandate that came to an end last December 2016, after 17 years in power. Kabila was to lead a transitional government until elections due to be held by the end of this year. However, the opposition has accused the government of undermining efforts to offer a peaceful exit.

The discontentment arose in the face of the failure of political negotiations that was mediated by the Catholic Church in the DRC.

Last March 31, the Security Council extended the mandate of the United Nations mission in the DRC for another year but reduced the number of troops. In a resolution unanimously adopted, the 15-member body decided to keep the UN Organization Stabilization Mission (MONUSCO) until March 2018.

*To learn more about the independent in-depth reporting project led by the Brazilian journalist Fabíola Ortiz and the photographer Flavio Forner, visit their website: www.capoeiracongo.com. They are also on Facebook and Twitter.

The UN flag flying half-mast. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 30 2017 (IPS)

The bodies of two UN experts have been found in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) two weeks after their team went missing.

Among the remains found were American Michael Sharp and Swede Zaida Catalan who were members of the U.N. Group of Experts which reports to the Security Council on the Congolese conflict, arms trafficking, rights abuses, and crimes against humanity. The two experts along with their interpreter and 3 drivers went missing on 12 March while investigating violence and alleged human rights abuses outside of the city of Kananga in the Kasai-Central province.

Secretary-General António Guterres said that he was “deeply saddened” by the events, stating: “Michael and Zaida lost their lives seeking to understand the causes of conflict and insecurity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to help bring peace to the country and its people.”

DRC has been marred by insecurity since 1994 when the Rwandan genocide and an influx of refugees plunged the country into the deadliest conflict in African history, killing almost 5 million civilians. 

Though the country declared peace in 2003, there has been a resurgence in violence in recent months. According to Human Rights Watch, protests erupted across the country when President Joseph Kabila stayed in power despite the end of his constitutionally mandated two-term limit in December 2016. 

Government security forces have since repressed opponents, allegedly killing over 50 people and jailing hundreds of opposition leaders and supporters. 

Meanwhile, clashes between government forces and local militias escalated in various parts of the country, including in the Kasai region which has experienced some of the worst violence. 

Over 400 people have been killed and 200,000 displaced from their homes in the Kasai region since August. Security forces have purportedly used excessive force, “unnecessarily firing” on alleged militia members including women and children, said Human Rights Watch. Two dozen mass graves have also been reported.

While speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley expressed concerns over the country’s violence and human rights violations, stating that the Congolese government is “corrupt” and “preys on its citizens.” 

“The UN peacekeeping mission…is aiding a government that is inflicting predatory behavior against its own people. We should have the decency and common sense to end this,” she continued. 

The Congolese government has reportedly blamed the UN team’s deaths on the Kamuina Nsapu, a local insurgent group that has clashed with government forces since its leader was killed six months ago. 

DRC government spokesperson Lambert Mende stated that the remains of Congolese interpreter Betu Tshintela was also found alongside Sharp and Catalan. Three other local staff still remain missing, including the team’s driver Isaac Kabuayi.

“The search is ongoing,” UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told IPS regarding the missing personnel.  

Secretary-General also called on a thorough examination on the deaths of the UN experts. “The United Nations will do everything possible to ensure that justice is done,” he stated. 

Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes Muthoni Wanyeki called on the DRC government to also conduct investigations, stating that the deaths should serve as a “reminder of the urgent need to end the violence in Kasai Province.” 

Human Rights Watch highlighted the need to ensure the implementation of a Catholic Church-mediated agreement signed at the end of 2016 which includes a clear commitment that President Kabila will not seek a third term and that presidential elections will be held before the end of 2017. 

“The [Human Rights Council’s] engagement now is critical to help protect civilians from further violence, press for accountability for serious abuses, and ensure that timely, credible elections are held to build a more democratic and rights-respecting country,” the organisation said. 

Sharp, 34, had been in the DRC for five years, first working as the Eastern Congo Coordinator for the Mennonite Central Committee. 

Catalan, 36, was a Swedish politician for the Green Party and later worked in the West Bank and Afghanistan prior to joining the UN Group of Experts.

A group of young Mbuti men from Biganiro, DRC, sit in front of their houses, which consist of makeshift structures made of wood and plastic sheeting. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

By Zahra Moloo
MUDJA/BIGANIRO, Sep 15 2016 (IPS)

The Bambuti people were the original inhabitants of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the oldest national park in Africa whose boundaries date back to 1925 when it was first carved out by King Albert of Belgium. But forbidden from living or hunting inside, the Bambuti now face repression from both park rangers and armed groups.

Other communities in the park accuse the DRC’s National Park Authority (ICCN) of expropriating land without their consent and without providing compensation, but park authorities say that rangers must undertake “legitimate defense” and take action when people in the park “recruit armed groups to secure the land.”Virunga National Park is considered a sensitive zone for the government because of potential oil exploration, mining and rebel groups.

Compounding the difficult relationship between communities and conservationists is the park’s location. According to researchers, it lies at the epicenter of an ongoing conflict and is affected by cross-border dynamics between Rwanda and Uganda.

Indigenous knowledge versus imposed development

Without access to the forest and to their ancestral lands to hunt and gather, the Bambuti have trouble surviving. Many depend on daily contractual labour from surrounding communities, such as cutting trees for wood that is sold in Goma. Seventy-year-old Muhima Sebazungu, one of Mudja’s community leaders, said that they are starting to forget their traditional knowledge of plants and medicines.

Patrick Kipalu, of the NGO Forest People’s Program, believes that the park and government’s exclusion of the Bambuti from conservation efforts is a waste of the immense amount of knowledge indigenous communities have about forest ecosystems. One solution, he said, would be to recruit them as rangers in protecting the park.

The ICCN’s Jean Claude Kyungu said that there are “specific criteria” for recruiting rangers, which the Bambuti do not fulfill, including having a diploma from the state.

Norbert Mushenzi, the ICCN’s deputy director of the Virunga National Park, said that the Bambuti have an “intellectual deficiency” and one way for them to benefit from the park is to “sell their cultural products and dances to tourists.”

His view is not unusual; many people, including those directly involved in advocating for the Bambuti, believe that they are inferior to Bantu communities. Although official policy under Mobutu’s regime aimed to ‘emancipate’ indigenous people and to consider them no different from other communities, in practice this meant promoting a sedentary lifestyle and agriculture.

A group of women from Mudja, DRC. Elders worry that the community is beginning to lose their knowledge of traditional medicine and plants. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

Doufina Tabu, president of a human rights organization, the Association of Volunteers of Congo (ASVOCO), works with Bambuti communities living outside the park whose land has been stolen.

“In Masisi there was a pygmy who was arrested because someone tricked him into giving up his field. He did not have a title deed so he was accused of illegal occupation, even though it’s his own land,” Tabu said. “He was arrested one year ago and we are still trying to get him out.”

While Tabu advocates for the Bambuti to secure land, he also believes that they must integrate into society, “so they can live like others.”

“There are things in their culture that we must change. They can’t continue to stay in the forest like animals,” he said.

A report by Survival International states that forcing “development” on indigenous people has “disastrous” impacts and that the most important factor to their well being is whether or not their land rights are respected.

According to Kipalu, the living conditions of the Bambuti are far worse now than when they were in the forest. “Being landless and living on the lands of other people means that they end up being treated almost as slaves,” he said.

The Bambuti from Biganiro do not understand why they cannot access basic services and still be able to return to the forest.

18-year-old Shukuru from Biganiro completed two years of primary school and wants to drive a motorbike, but does not know where to begin. “It’s around 20 dollars just to learn,” he said. “And we barely find enough to eat everyday.”

Legal avenues and long-term solutions

Around Kahuzi-Biega National Park, which like Virunga, is classified as a World Heritage Site, the organization Environment, Natural Resources and Development, ERND, together with the Rainforest Foundation Norway, filed a legal complaint in 2010 for the Batwa, another indigenous group, to receive compensation for the loss of their lands inside the park.

The case landed at the Supreme Court in Kinshasa in 2013 where it has remained. In May 2016, the organizations submitted their complaint to the African Commission of Human and People’s Rights, but have yet to receive a response from the Congolese government.

Mathilde Roffet, from Rainforest Foundation Norway, said that even if the court rules in favour of the Batwa, they will still have to deal with UNESCO and the park’s status as a world heritage site. She hopes that the case can set a precedent for other national parks.

Virunga, however, is a different scenario and according to Kipalu, “a really sensitive zone for the government because of potential oil exploration, mining and rebel groups.”

At the national level, the Dynamique des Groupes des Peuples Autothtones (DGPA), a network of organizations that works on the rights of indigenous people in the country, have been working on a new law recognizing their rights.

Although the DRC voted to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2007, the country’s constitution, 1973 land law and the 2002 Forestry Code make no reference to the rights of indigenous people.

The proposed law includes the protection of their traditional medicine and culture, as well as access to land and natural resources. Article 42 specifically states that indigenous people have the right to return to their ancestral lands and be fairly and adequately compensated if they have to relocate.

Since 2014, its adoption has been stalled. “They keep saying ‘we will discuss it next week, next month’ but the country is going through a lot of political changes, so they are giving a priority to other political issues first,” said Kipalu.

In the meantime, the network is working with the ICCN and the government on road map for the short term, which includes ensuring that indigenous people have access to education and healthcare.

“We do want the communities to go back to their land eventually. Some want to go back to the forest, but others are ready to accept parcels of land outside. It’s going to take many years,” said Kipalu.

The ICCN’s Jean-Claude Kungu said that the ICCN has been trying to improve relations with communities around the park through different initiatives.

“We have proposed initiating development activities like hydroelectric projects, water delivery, and other projects in favour of the population,” he said.

In the meantime, the Bambuti of Mudja and Biganiro will have to remain where they are. Giovanni Sisiri who was attacked by a park guard, brings out a bow and arrow and aims it at the forest. “We will have to start a rebellion one day!” He said, laughing. “We first want peace. But if the provincial and central governments do not find a solution for us, we will have to fight for it.”

Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation

Excerpt:

A man from the community of Mudja holds out his arm to show where he was injured by a park ranger. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

By Zahra Moloo
MUDJA/BIGANIRO, Sep 14 2016 (IPS)

It is late afternoon when a light drizzle begins to fall over a group of young men seated together in Mudja, a village that lies approximately 20 kilometres north of Goma on the outskirts of the Virunga National Park. Mudja is home to a community of around 40 families of indigenous Bambuti, also known as ‘pygmies.’*

One of the men holds out his arm to show an injury he received from a park ranger. Others chime in.“When the colonialists left the country, the people who managed those protected areas were trained by the Belgians that conservation should be done without people, in the old-school way." -- Patrick Kipalu of the Forest People's Program

“Just the day before yesterday, they shot at me when I was looking for honey and firewood,” says Giovanni Sisiri. “I abandoned everything, took my tools, and ran.”

Armed paramilitary rangers from the Virunga National Park are tasked with protecting the park from poachers and trespassers, often at risk to their own lives. In Congolese law, human habitation and hunting within the park is forbidden, including for the Bambuti, its original inhabitants.

The Bambuti living in Mudja said that at times they defy these laws, venturing inside to collect wood, hunt small animals and gather non-timber products, but recently it has become more difficult.

“A pygmy cannot live without the park. Before, they could enter secretly,” said Felix Maroy, an agronomist and livestock farmer who works with Bambuti communities. “Since January 2015, the guards are always patrolling the area. And there are other armed groups too, like the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).”

Imani Kabasele, a resident of Mudja and the head of the local branch of an NGO, Program for the Integration and Development of the Pygmy People (PDIP), said that two years ago, a Mbuti resident of a neighbouring village, Biganiro, went to look for honey and disappeared for three days. His body was later discovered, cut up by a machete. Kabasele believes it was someone from the FDLR that killed him.

Imani Kabasele, the head of the branch of a Congolese NGO, PDIP, said that the Mbuti know the forest far better than any other communities, but is it is dangerous for them to venture inside. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

Militarisation and colonial conservation policies

The initial demarcation of the Virunga National Park boundaries dates back to 1925 when it was first created by King Albert of Belgium.

The oldest national park in Africa, it was later expanded to include over seven thousand square kilometres of land. Classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, it is now managed by a private-public partnership between the National Park Authority of the DRC (ICCN) and the EU-funded Virunga Foundation, and is home to about a quarter of the world’s mountain gorillas. Congolese farmers living around the Virunga said that its colonial history creates the impression that it was “created by the Mzungu (white man), for the Mzungu.”

After independence, other national parks were established, including Maiko National Park, and Kahuzi-Biega National Park in South Kivu.  According to the Global Forest Coalition, the creation of national parks led to the eviction of thousands of indigenous people who neither gave their consent nor received compensation for their loss of land. It was, they state, “in violation of international law” and the country’s 1977 law on expropriation for public purposes.

Patrick Kipalu, the DRC Country Manager for the Forest People’s Program, said there is an active conflict between communities around the park, both indigenous Bambuti as well as agricultural Bantu, and “conservationists, park rangers and other NGOs working for conservation.”

“The old school of conservation in the colonial period was ‘people out of the forest’ and ‘it’s a protected area without anyone inside,’” said Kipalu. “When the colonialists left the country, the people who managed those protected areas were trained by the Belgians that conservation should be done without people, in the old-school way. They have kept the same strategies, though the ICCN is thinking of a conservation strategy which is supposed to include and involve communities.”

Jean Claude (18, right), poses with his friend Denis Sinzira. Most of the youth in Biganiro only go to school until they are 9 or 10 years old. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

Last year, in a letter to Kipalu, a representative of the customary chiefs in Lubero on the west coast of Lake Edward said that the ICCN had expropriated land without the consent of the people living on it and without offering any compensation. The letter also accused the ICCN of destroying and setting fire to villages. A 2004 report by a consultant to the World Bank, Dr Kai Schmidt-Soltau, states that the ICCN, along with WWF, claimed to have resettled 35,000 people from an area south-east of Lake Edward through a voluntary process, but that in fact the resettlement was carried out “at gun-point.”

Aggressive conservation activities are part of a widespread trend toward what some researchers call the militarization of conservation,an approach to protecting nature in which conservationists could engage in repressive policies that are counterproductive.

Jean Claude Kyungu, who in charge of community relations for Virunga, said that the park’s relations with communities around the park are good in some areas, but not in others, and that guards only fire at people if there is “resistance” from the population, for instance when communities “recruit armed groups to secure the land.” He added that the Bambuti are only arrested when they have defied the law.

When asked about the repressive behavior of park rangers and officers from the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) towards civilians in and around the park, Norbert Mushenzi, the ICCN’s deputy director of the Virunga National Park, said that the officers are “undertaking legitimate defense.”

“We also try to educate communities to leave and find alternative solutions, for instance to go to the fields around the park. There were 350 families in one area that left voluntarily,” he said. “The problem is not land. It’s that people want to concentrate in the park and we don’t know why,” he said.

But leaving the park and finding other places to settle is not so simple. One problem, according to Kipalu, is that people living inside illegally have nowhere to go. “The park is so big that it takes the whole area where communities work on their traditional lands,” he said.

Compounding the issue are larger and more complex political dynamics.  According to a group of researchers, Virunga lies at the “epicenter of ongoing conflict since 1993-4” and is “strongly affected by cross-border dynamics with both Rwanda and Uganda.” It is also a hideout for numerous armed domestic and foreign groups.

Communities who enter the park often do so with the protection of armed actors, and links between them are further strengthened by politicians who take advantage of the widespread sentiment that the park expropriated people’s ancestral lands, leading these politicians, in some cases, to “finance armed groups operating in the park.”

The authors suggest that the park “adopt a more conflict sensitive approach to conservation”, and increase efforts to improve local communication. But Jean-Claude Kyungu believes that the park’s approach is not particularly repressive given the enormous challenges. “At Kibirizi, the population lives with the FDLR,” he said. “Do we let these people just go and make their own laws not just in a park, but in a country, that is not their own? People who do not respect the boundaries have to be removed.”

Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation

*The word ‘pygmy’ has negative connotations and is used widely in the DRC. According to Survival International, it has been reclaimed by some communities as a term of identify.

Excerpt:

By Jean-Marie Guéhenno
NEW YORK, May 21 2015 (IPS)

When the Cold War ended in 1991, there was hope the U.N. Security Council would be able to take decisive action to create a more peaceful world. Early blue helmet successes in Cambodia, Namibia, Mozambique, and El Salvador seemed to vindicate that assessment.

Photo courtesy of Jean-Marie Guéhenno

This optimism was tripped up by the tragedies that followed in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Rwanda. U.N. peacekeepers were bystanders to horrible atrocities. Peacekeeping shrank rapidly.

By the end of the 1990s, common wisdom was that such missions were a thing of the past, and that from now on regional organisations would take charge.

Pundits were proven wrong, and in 1999 U.N. missions were deployed in quick succession to Kosovo, East Timor, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In terms of legitimacy and force-generation, they showed that the U.N. still had comparative advantages over all other organisations. But it was not at all clear if this was enough to allow the peacekeepers to succeed.

This was the turning point when I assumed the post of U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations in 2000. Over the next eight years, I learned that reviving and rebuilding U.N. peacekeeping was much more than a managerial and military challenge.The U.N. has reached a new turning point. Should the world double down on its investment, or cut its exposure before significant losses appear?

Today’s peacekeeping is a political enterprise whose success rests on the support of major powers, a viable political process between the parties to a conflict, and a wise and limited use of force.

This all came into vivid focus around the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Security Council was divided, the U.N. was besieged by scandals and the U.S. administration was at best indifferent to the United Nations. Yet the renewed expansion of peacekeeping continued unabated. To this day, it has not been reversed, and some 107,000 peacekeepers are presently deployed in 16 missions.

In 2000, a panel of experts led by Lakhdar Brahimi, a former foreign minister of Algeria, had made recommendations to avoid a repetition of the disasters of the 90’s: strengthen and professionalise peacekeeping, and don’t deploy peacekeepers where there is no peace to keep. Fifteen years later, U.N. peacekeeping is more professionally managed, and yet, it is still in a very precarious situation.

The demands on peacekeeping have grown too fast, the operational role of the U.N. is clearly ahead of its capabilities, and most peacekeeping missions are deployed in places where war has only subsided, not ended. The U.N. has reached a new turning point. Should the world double down on its investment, or cut its exposure before significant losses appear?

The reality is that the U.N. cannot just cut and run: in South Sudan, more than 100,000 people are sheltered in U.N. compounds, and their lives would be at risk if the U.N. were to pull out. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the state remains very weak, and there is little confidence that the country would not slide back into chaos if the mission was abruptly withdrawn. What is to be done?

First, acknowledge that force indeed matters, and can provide indispensible political leverage. That means a further strengthening of the operational capacities of the U.N. An 8.47-billion-dollar budget looks enormous, but the fact is that the world is doing peacekeeping on the cheap. This apparently high figure is but a fraction of what the U.S. and NATO were spending in Afghanistan.

But subcontracting U.N. operations to organisations like NATO is not a viable strategy for the future: it is very costly, and politically discredited by the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan. Peacekeeping is all in the art of implementation, and when the U.N. is left outside the military chain of command, it quickly loses control over the political strategy.

There is no alternative to a direct U.N. operational role if peacekeeping is to retain a reputation of impartiality, but specific capacities are needed to be effective.

Western militaries, which have largely shunned U.N. peacekeeping since the end of the nineties, need to re-engage with U.N. peacekeeping in a significant way, either as blue helmets, or through ad hoc arrangements that will allow for the provision of quick reaction forces and dedicated assets.

Second, return to politics. It is unrealistic to expect a U.N. force – or any force for that matter, as the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences show – to impose a peace. An exclusive focus on military operations to protect civilians, as in Congo, can become a diversion.

An extensive definition of terrorism, which enrolls the U.N. in the so-called “war on terror”, is shrinking the political space in which it should operate. The most important contribution that the U.N. can make to peacemaking is not fighting; it is to support inclusive political processes.

The rhetoric of peacekeeping has been ahead of its reality, and we should not oversell it. It is an enormous responsibility to intervene in the life of others, and the path between irresponsible indifference and reckless activism is narrow.

To gain domestic support for foreign interventions, peace operations have been presented as opportunities to reengineer countries. As outsiders, we should be more modest.

A genuine international community, based on shared values, should remain our goal, but it will not exist unless we can shore up the imperfect states that are its building blocks. Many are crumbling faster than new structures can be built, but the international order is still based on their primary responsibility.

For an organisation of states like the U.N., this is an existential challenge. For the people who are the unwitting victims of collapsed states, this is a matter of life and death. Even if the risk of failure is always there, abstention should never be the option of choice.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Former child soldiers enlisted by Al Shabaab are handed over to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) after their capture by forces of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Nov. 1, 2012. Credit: UN Photo/Tobin Jones

By Leila Zerrougui
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 7 2015 (IPS)

One year ago, representatives of the last eight governments of the world named by the U.N. secretary-general for the recruitment and use of children in their security forces gathered at the United Nations in New York to declare they were ready to take the steps necessary to make their security forces child-free.

The gathering in itself was historic. And so is the campaign “Children, Not Soldiers”, launched jointly with the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF exactly a year ago. The campaign builds on the growing international consensus that children do not belong in security forces and seeks to galvanise support to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children by national security forces in conflict by the end of 2016.A few years ago, it was not uncommon in my travels to be greeted by military commanders, surrounded by children in uniforms and carrying weapons. That has become unacceptable now.

The countries concerned by the campaign are: Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen.

There is still a lot of work ahead of us, but we have come a long way. A few years ago, it was not uncommon in my travels to be greeted by military commanders, surrounded by children in uniforms and carrying weapons. That has become unacceptable now.

Governments identified by the U.N. secretary-general acknowledge that children do not belong in their security forces and most have taken concrete steps to make sure their children do not become soldiers.

In the campaign’s first year, progress has been steady. The campaign received broad support and we achieved results that are making a difference in children’s lives. Chad has completed all the reforms and measures included in its Action Plan signed with the U.N. and has been taken off the U.N. secretary-general’s list of child recruiters.

Over 400 children were released from the national army in Myanmar. In all of 2014, in DRC, there was only one case of child recruitment by the national army, and the child was quickly released. In Afghanistan, the recruitment of children is in decline and only five cases were recorded by the U.N.

Six of the seven remaining countries concerned by the campaign have now signed and recommitted to Action Plans with the United Nations. These Action Plans are agreements that indicate all the steps necessary to end and prevent the recruitment of children in government forces.

The “Children, not Soldiers” campaign has also accomplished its purpose as a rallying cry to make the issue of child soldiers a top concern of the international community. “How can we help?” was the question asked by officials from dozens of countries, NGOs, partners from the U.N. system, regional organisations and many more.

Officials from countries involved in the campaign have also met with representatives from other countries who ended the use of child soldiers in their armies. These were opportunities to share experiences, successes and challenges.

This is positive, but the campaign’s first year has also shown that goodwill and commitments with the U.N. are not enough to guarantee that children will not become soldiers.

The conflict in South Sudan is a cruel reminder that acting on provisions included in an Action Plan, such as the establishment of child protection units in a country’s armed forces, or taking steps to criminalise the recruitment of children is not enough to guarantee that boys and girls will be fully protected if conflict strikes again.

In Yemen, months of work leading to the signature of an Action Plan in May 2014 have been derailed by the current political situation. Instead of the anticipated progress, data gathered by the U.N. indicates a spike in the recruitment of child soldiers by all parties to the conflict.

Even the armed group Al-Houthi Ansar Allah, whose leaders were actively engaged in dialogue with the U.N., have reneged on their commitment to protect children.

We cannot afford to watch silently while children once again pay the price for political instability in their countries. We keep reminding parties to the conflict that they cannot recruit or use children, that it is a war crime. We ask all those involved in peace talks to make sure that releasing children is a priority.

The big lesson of this campaign’s first year is that the road to child-free government armies is promising, but also full of obstacles. The setbacks of 2014 show that even if measures to protect children are put in place, gains can be reversed under the pressure of conflict.

We also have a better understanding that many countries face similar challenges. Addressing these common challenges will be a priority in the campaign’s second year.

Accountability is central to our work. To enhance accountability, I will encourage all countries concerned by the campaign that have not yet done so to criminalise the recruitment and use of children and to spell out consequences for offenders. Investigations and prosecutions of child recruiters remain far too rare, even in countries that have criminalised the recruitment of children. Without sanctions, children will never be fully protected.

Another challenge faced by most countries is verifying the age of their soldiers. That may seem like a problem easy to solve, but it is in fact a delicate and difficult task to execute in countries that do not have well-established birth registration systems.

The U.N. will continue to work with governments to establish or refine age-verification procedures to identify underage recruits and release them from the army.

Releasing children found in the ranks of national forces is essential, but they cannot be left on their own to rebuild their lives. Adequate resources must be available for community-based programmes that provide psycho-social assistance and help children build their future through educational and vocational opportunities. Helping children and their communities is the best way to not only prevent re-recruitment, but also to build peace and stability.

Throughout the year, I will continue to reach out to member states concerned by the campaign, the international community, regional organisations and all relevant partners to mobilise political, technical and financial support to address challenges faced by countries in the implementation of their Action Plan.

This is essential to encourage and guide concerned countries who must put in place mechanisms strong enough to safeguard the progress accomplished to protect children from recruitment, now and in the future should a new crisis strike.

The campaign has already received tremendous support from many who could make a real difference. This year, I call on everyone to join us, because, together, we can make sure that they are children, not soldiers.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

A soldier stands over the weapons seized from four suspected members of Al Shabaab, the Islamic insurgent group, in Mogadishu, Somalia. The militants, all in their mid-twenties, were captured during joint security operation by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali security services and were found in possession of a rocket-propelled grenade, two sub-machine guns and 84 rounds of ammunition. Credit: UN Photo/Stuart Price

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 24 2014 (IPS)

A new Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) beginning on Dec. 24 represents a historic moment in global efforts to keep weapons proliferation in check.

Nounou Booto Meeti, programme director at the Centre for Peace, Security and Armed Violence Prevention, told IPS that in her own home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the uncontrolled trade of arms has contributed to human rights violations including rape and the recruitment of child soldiers."We’ve seen the Syrian government do horrendous things to their own civilians, and arms are continuing to go there, notably from Russia. That is a perfect modern case in point of what the ATT could stop if both of those countries were a part of it." -- Allison Pytlak from Control Arms

Meeti has actively campaigned for a global ATT, including advocating for the inclusion of a gender-based violence criterion.

The criterion is especially important for countries like the DRC where rape and sexual slavery has been used to systematically terrorise village after village.

Meeti emphasised that women, men and children are all affected by gender-based violence. In the DRC, when a village is attacked the men are often killed so that the women who are alive will not be able to defend themselves, she explained.

The Arms Trade Treaty, if implemented properly, will require states selling weapons to not only consider if the weapons are going to a country where there are systematic violations of human rights, including gender-based violence, but also how likely it is that those weapons will end up there through diversion from another country.

Meeti urged all countries to do their best to put the ATT into practice “so that we can see the reduction of armed violence, the reduction of armed conflict and the end of gender-based violence.”

She said that it has taken a long time to get to this point because there are a lot of interests in the global arms trade, which is an industry that earns billions and billions of dollars primarily for a small group of arms producing countries.

She added that “the transparency within the ATT will influence the reduction of military expenses in favour of development.”

The proliferation of weapons in countries like the DRC and the free flow of weapons into the ‘wrong hands’ has been allowed to continue because of an almost complete lack of international regulation of the arms trade.

According to Amnesty International, there are more international laws regulating the trade of bananas than of weapons.

Meeti said that they had shown that there was no management of government stockpiles of weapons in the DRC, making it easy for arms to be diverted to the wrong hands. Porous borders meant that weapons could easily be brought in from any of the nine countries that share borders with the DRC.

She said that non-state actors also had ready unregulated access to arms, funded by the DRC’s vast resource wealth and international actors with interests in exploiting those resources.

Allison Pytlak from Control Arms told IPS that the ATT is “about introducing responsibility into the arms trade, not about trying to stop the trade of arms.”

The treaty also asks “all parties involved, especially the arms dealers, to think twice about where their weapons are going,” Pytlak said.

She said that the ATT aims to fix problems like states receiving weapons after they had stopped acting responsibly.

“Syria is a good example, we’ve seen the Syrian government do horrendous things to their own civilians, and arms are continuing to go there, notably from Russia. That is a perfect modern case in point of what the ATT could stop if both of those countries were a part of it,” Pytlak said.

Pytlak also said that weapons often end up in the ‘wrong hands’ through diversion, corrupt officials and theft from insecure government stockpiles.

“A lot of guns start out on the legal market and then end up on the illegal market,” she noted.

“By having export licensing officials who have a second thought about, where are these weapons really going to go? It looks a little bit unstable there, or there’s a history of diversion there, if they start thinking twice about that, the source might dry up and diversion will cease,” she said.

Only the first step

The Arms Trade Treaty covers everything from small arms and light weapons to warships, including battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large-calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, missiles and missile launchers. The treaty also covers ammunition and parts and components.

Millions of new weapons and 12 billion bullets are produced each year, while over 800 million guns already exist in the world.

The entering into force of the ATT on Wednesday with 61 ratifications and 130 signatures is only a small, albeit notable, step in the right direction.

Two thousand people die from armed violence every day. Armed violence is also fuelling the global refugee crisis, with over 26 million people around the world displaced due to conflict.

Arms affected countries are predominantly also lower income countries, and may struggle to implement the treaty.

Pytlak says that one current option being explored is the possibility of using Official Development Assistance (aid) to help lower income countries with the costs of implementing the treaty.

A new report from Chatham House says that the indirect impact of the arms trade on development includes the diversion of funds from healthcare to defence, increased unemployment and decreased educational opportunities.

In a statement Tuesday U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon described the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty as historic.

“Ultimately, it attests to our collective determination to reduce human suffering by preventing the transfer or diversion of weapons to areas afflicted by armed conflict and violence and to warlords, human rights abusers, terrorists and criminal organisations,” Ban said.

Follow Lyndal Rowlands on Twitter: @lyndalrowlands

Edited by Kitty Stapp

U.N. Peacekeepers patrol the South Sudanese village of Yuai. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 2014 (IPS)

Finding ways to better integrate the two arms of U.N. Peace Operations – Special Political Missions and Peacekeeping Operations – will be one of the priorities for a new review panel headed by Nobel Peace Laureate and former president of Timor-Leste José Ramos-Horta.

The review panel will look at how combined U.N. Peace Operations can respond to demands from the international community for increased responsiveness and effectiveness.“The international community is demanding that the U.N. intervene faster and more effectively to end conflicts.” -- Jose Ramos-Horta

In light of recent reports of incomplete or untruthful reporting from U.N. Peace Operations, such as the investigation into an alleged mass rape in Tabit, Sudan, another pressing issue for the panel will be transparency and accountability.

In an interview with IPS, Ramos-Horta explained that the review was not a fact-finding mission but that serious events that happen on the ground “illustrate the need for serious thinking and changes, in the whole of the peacekeeping and political missions.

“The U.N. cannot be seen to shy away from reporting to the powers that be what happens on the ground. Because in not doing so we add to impunity,” he said.

The 14-member Panel on Peace Operations was announced on Oct. 31 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and quickly drew criticism for only having three female panel members. In response, an additional three female panel members were announced Monday.

The low representation of women on the panel, particularly initially, was considered incongruous with the U.N.’s public talk about greater participation from women in its peacebuilding activities.

Ramos-Horta told IPS last week “it is acknowledged that there is significant discrepancy, and as I understand there are well-placed, well-argued criticisms in regard to this imbalance.”

Ramos-Horta said that utmost in the thinking of the panel will be the protection of women and children and the role of women in dialogue and peace agreements.

One of the new panel members is Radhika Coomaraswamy, a former Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, who is expected to help ensure the panel works together with plans for implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325.

This may represent some recognition of the need to move towards action after several years of talk on women’s role in the peace building agenda.

Ramos-Horta told IPS that the panel will work closely with U.N. Women and will listen to civil society and representative women’s groups more so in regions where they suffer the brunt of conflicts.

José Ramos-Horta (right), Chair of the High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, briefs journalists. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

Balancing act with finite timeline

That the panel is also missing members from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Sudan, where seemingly intractable conflicts have caused significant challenges for U.N. Peacekeeping in recent years, is another area for concern.

Ramos-Horta’s own experience with U.N. Peace Operations includes in his home country of Timor-Leste and in his recent role as U.N. Special Envoy to the Special Political Mission in Guinea-Bissau.

Consultation with representatives from countries at the receiving end of peace operations could help to identify new ways to control these conflicts that in some cases seem out of control.

Ramos-Horta said that one of the reasons that difficult conflicts have continued is in part due to a lack of local leadership and cooperation from local governments. For this reason, more consultation with representatives from these countries may be strategically wise.

But it is likely the the panel will feel that it is more pressed to focus on consulting with the governments of major troop and fund contributing countries, as well as the African Union and the NATO as the two other sources of multilateral peacekeepers.

Considering the spiraling scale and cost of U.N. Peace Operations, this will certainly be a priority for the review.

During the interview, Ramos-Horta also discussed the absence of a standing army or training camp for U.N. peacekeepers that would be ready to respond when crises erupt.

Ramos-Horta said that his own country of Timor-Leste had to turn to bilateral support in 2006, because the U.N. was unable to provide immediate assistance when violence re-ignited.

However, although a standing army may be able to bring conflicts under control faster through a faster response time, it would undoubtedly also provide new challenges in terms of financing.

Although one role of the panel will be to review peace operations in light of the changing nature of conflict, Ramos-Horta had a measured view of modern conflict.

He said it was important not to forget the horrors of past wars, such as the killing fields of Cambodia or the Iran-Iraq War.

Indeed, notwithstanding the complexity and severity of contemporary conflicts such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria, the average number of people killed by war each year has decreased since the end of the Cold War.

Over this same period, the scale of U.N. Peace Operations has increased.

Ramos-Horta said that there are now greater expectations on the international community to act quickly in response to conflict.

“Civil society has more access to information and demand action from governments, that’s why you see today much greater demand and pressure on the international community to act,” he said.

“I wish that in my own country [Timor-Leste] from 1975 onwards there had been digital media and there had been international outrage from the very beginning as it is now happening in regard to Central African Republic, for instance, or in regard to Iraq, Libya, Syria conflicts”, he said.

“The international community is demanding that the U.N. intervene faster and more effectively to end conflicts.”

One way of making Peace Operations more efficient is to also look at conflict prevention measures.

To this end, Ramos-Horta said that one of the aims of the review will be to look at how to better finance the Special Political Missions, the arm of U.N. Peace Operations that aims to reduce the need for peacekeepers by stemming conflicts at their source.

Currently the funding available to Special Political Missions, of which there are currently 11 worldwide, is limited.

While peacekeeping has it’s own separate, ballooning, budget that currently stands at seven billion dollars for the 2014-15 financial year, the secretary general has to find funds for the Special Political Missions from the already cash-strapped U.N. General Budget.

At the end of the day, the limited financial capacity of the U.N. to do the work the international community expects of it may be the greatest priority for the panel, despite the other practical considerations it will have to make.

Follow Lyndal Rowlands on Twitter @lyndal.rowlands

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A carpenter organises a load of mahogany, precious wood seized by the authorities in Cuba's Ciénaga de Zapata wetlands. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28 2014 (IPS)

A coalition of international organisations, led by INTERPOL and backed by the United Nations, is pursuing a growing new brand of criminals – primarily accused of serious environmental crimes – who have mostly escaped the long arm of the law.

Described as a worldwide operation, it is the first of its kind targeting individuals wanted for a wide range of crimes, including logging, poaching and trafficking in animals declared endangered species.

Widespread poaching, particularly in central Africa, has resulted in the loss of at least 60 percent of elephants in that region during the last decade.

Last week, INTERPOL, the world’s largest international police organisation, released photographs of nine fugitives charged with these crimes – and who are on the run.

The individuals targeted include, among others, Feisal Mohamed Ali, alleged to be the leader of an ivory smuggling ring in Kenya, according to the U.N. Daily News.

The international coalition is seeking help from the public for information that could help track down the nine suspects whose cases have been singled out for the initial phase of the investigations.

Rob Parry-Jones, manager of international policy at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), told IPS, “It sends a strong message that environmental crime is not merely an animal being illegally shot here or a tree illegally felled there. Environmental crime is highly organised crime and can have devastating impacts.”

He said INTERPOL’s response is something that WWF has wanted for some time. “It is also something that enforcement agencies have wanted for some time.”

The political platform and enabling environment for INTERPOL and other institutions to undertake the necessary research, and to be in a position to release such findings, is a welcome advance from a few years back when WWF and TRAFFIC first started their campaign to raise the political profile of wildlife crime, Parry-Jones said.

TRAFFIC (Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce) is a wildlife trade monitoring network supported by WWF.

Code-named INFRA-Terra (International Fugitive Round Up and Arrest), the global operation is supported by the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) – which is a collaborative effort of the Secretariat of the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), along with INTERPOL, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Bank and the World Customs Organisation.

In a press statement last week, Ben Janse van Rensburg, chief of enforcement support for CITES, said, “This first operation represents a big step forward against wildlife criminal networks.”

He said countries are increasingly treating wildlife crime as a serious offence, and “we will leave no stone unturned to locate and arrest these criminals to ensure they are brought to justice.”

Nathalie Frey, deputy political director at Greenpeace International, told IPS her organisation strongly supports the INTERPOL initiative to strengthen law enforcement against environmental crimes.

“Whilst INTERPOL has been looking more closely into environmental crimes for a number of years, this is the first time we have seen them reach out to the public appealing for further information and leads,” she said.

By giving environmental criminals a name and a face, she said, “it shows that law enforcement agencies are finally starting to take crimes such as illegal logging and fishing as seriously as murder or theft.”

WWF’s Parry-Jones told IPS that addressing environmental crimes effectively across international borders requires legal frameworks that can talk with each other.

Dual criminality where crimes of this scale are recognised in countries’ legal frameworks as serious crimes — a penalty of four-plus year’s imprisonment — brings the crimes within the scope of the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC), enabling international law enforcement cooperation and mutual legal assistance, he said.

The nature of the crimes illustrates the links with other forms of transnational crime, including people trafficking and arms smuggling, and reinforces the argument over the past few years, both by WWF and TRAFFIC, that environmental crime is a cross-sectoral issue and a serious crime, he added.

Greenpeace’s Frey told IPS environmental crime is “big business”, and at an estimated 70-213 billion dollars per year, the earnings are almost on a par with other criminal activities such as drugs and arms trafficking. That estimate includes logging, poaching and trafficking of a wide range of animals, illegal fisheries, illegal mining and dumping of toxic waste.

Behind these perpetrators, she pointed out, are large networks of criminal activities, with corruption often permeating the whole supply chain of valuable commodities such as timber or fish.

Illegal logging, for example, is rife in many timber-producing countries, and is one of the main culprits for wiping out vast areas of forest that are often home to endangered species.

“Consumer markets are still awash with illegal wood despite regulations to ban the trade,” Frey said.

This, she said, is reflected in the staggering figures released by INTERPOL that illegal logging accounts for 50-90 percent of forestry in key tropical producer countries.

“Whilst we strongly welcome INTERPOL’s initiative to track down offenders and crack down on corruption it is very important that CITES [the U.N. convention to regulate international trade in endangered species] takes much greater action to encourage its parties to step up enforcement and controls,” Frey said.

She singled out the example of Afrormosia, a valuable tropical hardwood found in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

This species is under threat and has been listed as requiring special trade regulation under CITES, yet a blind eye continues to be turned to many cases of illegal trade.

Industrial loggers have a free pass to harvest Afrormosia in the country, despite illegal logging estimated to be almost 90 percent, she said.

CITES is supposed to verify legality, yet hundreds of CITES permits were unaccounted for. Traceability in the country is also non-existent, Frey added.

By allowing the continued trade of species that have been illegally harvested, CITES fails to protect species from extinction, and its lack of controls and weaknesses only serve to fuel environmental crimes, she declared.

According to the U.N. Daily News, wildlife crime has become a serious threat to the security, political stability, economy, natural resources and cultural heritage of many countries.

The extent of the response required to effectively address the threat is often beyond the sole remit of environmental or wildlife law enforcement agencies, or even of one country or region alone, it said.

Last June, the joint U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP)-INTERPOL Environmental Crime Crisis report, pointed to an increased awareness of, and response to, the growing global threat.

It called for concerted action aimed at strengthening action against the organised criminal networks profiting from the trade.

According to the report, one terrorist group operating in East Africa is estimated to make between 38 and 56 million dollars per year from the illegal trade in charcoal.

“Wildlife and forest crime also play a serious role in threat finance to organized crime and non-State armed groups, including terrorist organizations,” it said.

Ivory provides income to militia groups in the DRC and the Central African Republic. And it also provides funds to gangs operating in Sudan, Chad and Niger.

Last week, Uganda complained the loss of about 3,000 pounds of ivory from the vaults of its state-run wildlife protection agency.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Gold from eastern Congo. The war in Congo is fueled by a thriving gold trade today, with armed groups controlling mines and earning an estimated 50 million dollars last year from selling gold and minerals. This gold is from a day's work at Kaniola mine. Credit: ENOUGH Project/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 25 2014 (IPS)

Major U.S. jewellery companies and retailers have started to take substantive steps to eliminate the presence of “conflict gold” from their supply chains, according to the results of a year-long investigation published Monday.

Rights advocates, backed by the United Nations, have been warning for years that mining revenues are funding warlords and militia groups operating in the Great Lakes region of Africa, particularly in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In 2010, such concerns resulted in landmark legislation here in the United States aimed at halting this trade, and those laws have since spurred similar legislative proposals in the European Union and Canada.“Just a few years ago, jewellery companies were pretty resistant to making progress on this, but today there is clearly interest in supporting peace and finding out more about the role they can play in this issue." -- Holly Dranginis of Enough Project

Three of the most problematic of these “conflict minerals” – tin, tantalum and tungsten, collectively known as 3T – are used primarily by the electronics industry. In recent years, that sector has made notable progress in certifying and otherwise regulating its use of these materials.

Yet forward movement has been slower on the fourth conflict mineral from the Great Lakes region – gold.

“Over two-thirds of the eastern Congo’s 3T mines are conflict-free today,” a new report from the Enough Project, a Washington-based watchdog group, states.

“Gold, however, remains a major financial lifeline for armed actors. Ninety-eight percent of artisanally mined gold … is smuggled out of the country annually, and much of that gold benefits armed commanders.”

Last year, the report estimates, some eight to ten tons of gold were smuggled out of eastern DRC. That would have been worth more than 400 million dollars.

Much of this smuggling is thought to take place through Congo’s neighbours, particularly Uganda and Burundi, and onwards to Dubai. From there, most of this gold is able to anonymously enter the global marketplace.

The jewellery industry, meanwhile, is the largest user of global gold supplies, constituting slightly less than half of worldwide demand. “Conflict gold thus taints the industry as whole,” the report warns.

Pledging to stay

According to the Enough Project’s new rankings, however, the industry is starting to respond to these concerns. Researchers looked at both past and pledged actions by 14 of the largest jewellery companies and retailers in the United States – part of an industry worth some five billion dollars a year – and found a spectrum of initiatives already underway.

On the one hand, some companies appear to have undertaken no conflict minerals-related initiatives whatsoever, at least as far as the new report’s metrics were concerned. Three companies scored zero points, while others – including major retailers such as Walmart, Sears and Costco – scored very low.

On the other hand, the researchers found a few key companies that have undertaken particularly notable responses. They say there is reason to believe that these leaders could now influence the rest of the industry.

“We really wanted to focus on the leading jewellery retailers in the U.S. because of their leverage over the industry – we wanted to take lessons from our experience with the electronics industry, that leading companies can move an entire industry,” Holly Dranginis, a policy analyst with the Enough Project and the lead author on the new report, told IPS.

“Just a few years ago, jewellery companies were pretty resistant to making progress on this, but today there is clearly interest in supporting peace and finding out more about the role they can play in this issue. We found two very clear leaders among the 14.”

Those are two of the most recognizable jewellery brands and retailers in the world, Signet Jewelers and Tiffany & Co. Three others highlighted for recognition in the rankings are the commercial retailers J.C. Penney Company, Target Corp. and Cartier.

The Enough Project researchers sent a broad questionnaire to these companies, and Signet and Tiffany received the highest overall rankings. Yet Dranginis notes that what differentiates these companies is merely the fact that they have put in place policies around the sourcing of gold from the Great Lakes region.

Perhaps more importantly, these companies have also started engaging on the ground in countries such as the DRC. Over the past three years, for instance, Signet has pledged to continue sourcing certified gold from the country, rather than simply moving on to another country entirely. The company is also making its sourcing strategies open to others in the industry.

“We see our involvement in industry guidance and standards in the gold sector and the development and implementation of the Signet Responsible Sourcing Protocols as part of a broader initiative of ensuring responsible business practices through the entire jewellery supply chain, for gold and for all other materials,” David A. Bouffard, a vice president for Signet Jewelers, told IPS in a statement.

“It is important to us that our SRSPs are open public protocols which can be used by anyone in our industry, and which Signet’s suppliers can use to their benefit in their relationships with other customers.”

Tiffany, meanwhile, is making a concerted effort to assist local communities, particularly small-scale miners and their families. Both companies reportedly have individual executives that have taken a particular interest in the issue.

“One of the concerns has been that compliance with [U.S. conflict minerals laws] has pushed some companies to think they should leave the region and source elsewhere,” the Enough Project’s Dranginis says.

“Supporting community initiatives in the region is critical, because a lot of communities are affected by major market changes. We also need to ensure that gold miners and their families are supported in a comprehensive way, looking into sustainable projects, alternative livelihoods, financial inclusion and related issues.”

Certification capacity

Action by major brands is, of course, a key component in driving the global response to the impacts of conflict gold. Yet an important collection of multistakeholder and trade mechanisms has also sprung up in recent years, directly facilitating these initiatives.

Central to any attempt at tracking and regulating raw commodities, for instance, is a system of certification. And just as the electronics industry has been able to use metals smelters as an important lynchpin in this process, so too has the gold industry been able to start certifying gold refiners.

According to the new report, in 2012 just six gold refiners had been certified as “conflict free” by one such initiative, the Conflict Free Smelter Program. Two years later, that number has risen to 52 – though “there are still many refiners outside the system,” the study notes.

Advocates are also calling for stepped-up and coordinated action by governments. While the United States, European Union and Canada could all soon have legislation on the use of conflict minerals, some are increasingly pushing for action from the government of the United Arab Emirates aiming to constrict the flow of conflict gold through Dubai.

Likewise, India, Pakistan and China are among the most prominent consumers of gold worldwide, and thus constitute key sources of demand.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

The funeral procession for Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana in Gaza. Shana was killed by an Israeli Defence Force tank in April 2008 because, eyewitnesses said, he had begun to film the tanks that were firing. The resulting investigation by the Israelis led to no disciplinary action. Credit: Mohammed Omer/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 4 2014 (IPS)

A new report published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) shows that nine out of 10 cases of journalist killings go unpunished.

The report found that between 2004 and 2013, 370 journalists were murdered “in direct retaliation for their work” and that in 90 percent of these cases there was total impunity – “no arrests, no prosecutions, no convictions.”“Syria is a graveyard of journalism and journalists who go there." -- Nadia Bilbassy-Charters

CPJ also found that although “in some cases, the assassin or an accomplice has been convicted, in only a handful is the mastermind of the crime brought to justice.”

The report’s author, Elisabeth Witchel, told IPS, “Impunity has really grown to be one of the greatest threats to journalist safety. When journalists are killed, and no one is prosecuted, it opens the doors for new attacks to take place.

“It’s not just one story, it’s not just one journalist that is killed, the whole media community feels intimidated.

“Journalists feel insecure if one of their own is killed and there’s no official justice. It builds a climate of intimidation and can lead to underreporting of very important issues.”

Witchel said that the issues that journalists who have been killed with impunity cover are crucial to their communities and include crime, corruption, human rights, conflict and politics.

The report was published to coincide with the first International day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists on Nov. 2.

Investigative journalist Eric Mwamba from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) told IPS how the fear of being arrested, tortured and the risk of losing his life has affected his work as a journalist.

“To my knowledge, no perpetrator of violence against journalists in Africa has been held accountable,” Mwamba said.

Mwamba added that defamation laws and the ambiguous notion of contempt were also used by the Congolese justice system to try to muzzle journalists.

This was particularly relevant when working on financial stories, he said. Due to strong links between public and private interests in the DRC, state actors are also often shareholders in companies being investigated, Mwamba said.

“During my term as president of the Forum for African Investigative Reporters, I studied some cases. I remember the case of Didace Namujimbo, a journalist for Radio Okapi who was murdered in the east of the DRC. Judicial investigations, unfortunately, did not provide a favourable outcome.”

“I hope that with the fall of the regime of President Blaise Compaore in Burkina Faso this week, the new authorities would help to know the truth about the assassination of Norbert Zongo, another journalist killed in 1998 in this country,” Mwamba said.

Mwamba was forced to leave the DRC because of his investigative journalism, and has since lived and worked in several other countries and regions, including in West Africa and in Australia.

He told IPS, “I don’t think there is anything worse in life than when someone is forced to leave his country for fear of losing his life.”

At a discussion held at the United Nations on Monday, panelists discussed the role of the United Nations, national governments, the judiciary and the public in ending impunity in crimes against journalists.

Al-Arabiya News Channel foreign correspondent Nadia Bilbassy-Charters, who recently reported on human rights violations near Syria’s border, spoke about the huge risks faced by journalists working in the Middle East.  Two-thirds of the journalists killed in recent years were working in the Middle East, she said,

“Syria is a graveyard of journalism and journalists who go there,” she said.

Bilbassy-Charters added that most of the journalists who are killed are local freelancers who have no one to protect them.

“They take an enormous risk just to tell the world what’s happening. And even with that risk, I don’t know if the world is responding, especially in Syria. It’s a moral failure of the 21^st century what is happening in Syria,” she said.

Journalist safety and the post-2015 development agenda

Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO) Getachew Engida told the panel that UNESCO and media advocacy organisations from across the world are advocating for media freedom to be incorporated into the United Nations Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda.

“For now, freedom of expression, the safety of journalists and ending impunity are not included as such in the proposed agenda to follow post-2015,” he said.

He said that UNESCO is advocating to “ensure recognition of the importance of freedom of expression for sustainable development and to enhance the safety of those who make this possible.

“Every journalist killed is a day without news, a day when freedom of expression is undermined, when basic human rights are violated, when the rule of law and democracy are weakened. The climate of fear created by impunity throws a shadow over the sustainable development of entire societies,” Engida said.

Joel Simon, CPJ’s director, told the panel, “When it comes to actual violence committed against journalists, when it comes to levels of impunity, the trends are moving in the wrong direction. In fact, these last two years have been the most deadly and the most dangerous that CPJ has ever documented. Record numbers of journalists killed, record numbers of journalists imprisoned.

“I have a concern that governments, the U.N. system, the public could mistake awareness, which is good, for progress.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena. Reparations, both monetary and non-monetary, can provide emotional, psychological, physical, and economic relief for the pain, humiliation, trauma, and violence that sexual violence survivors have endured, according to Physicians for Human Rights. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Sucharita S.K. Varanasi
BOSTON, Jul 24 2014 (IPS)

Before a sexual violence survivor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has her day in court, she must surmount many obstacles. Poor or nonexistent roads and costly transportation may prevent her from going to a police station to report the crime, or to a hospital to receive treatment for the injuries sustained during the violence.

Inadequate training of law enforcement, limited resources for thorough investigations, and lack of witness protection may also compromise her case.

In the DRC, another impediment is a heavy reliance on traditional forms of justice. Sexual violence survivors are compelled by their families and communities to seek redress through traditional mechanisms because the process often leads to the survivor’s family receiving some type of compensation, such as a goat.

However attractive traditional justice may be for the family of those victimised, the survivor is rarely at the centre of the process. Understanding the various hurdles that a survivor must overcome in accessing the formal legal system is the first step in a survivor’s pursuit of justice.

Until recently, the international community has largely ignored the fact that even if survivors overcome many of these challenges and win their legal cases, they rarely receive reparations.

During a roundtable discussion hosted by Physicians for Human Rights, Georgetown University Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and Columbia School of International and Public Affairs earlier this year, experts identified reasons why survivors are unable to retrieve these hard-won reparations, and issued a set of recommendations that aim to help reverse this trend.

Sucharita S.K. Varanasi, a senior programme officer with Physicians for Human Rights.

In order to receive court-ordered monetary compensation, survivors of sexual violence must  navigate the onerous post-trial process alone – without counsel or support – and either pay upfront prohibitively expensive administrative fees and duties or collect and present difficult-to-obtain paperwork necessary to waive these fees.

Overcoming these obstacles can prove daunting – even insurmountable – for individuals who are well-resourced and connected, let alone for the majority of survivors who are financially indigent and disenfranchised.

The international community is finally paying apt attention to the fact that even if a survivor surmounts the many obstacles she faces in pursuing justice, it may never lead to compensation or to her perpetrator being brought to justice.

The roundtable participants, including key international stakeholders in the DRC, provided short-term recommendations to help survivors receive their judgments in hand. These include the training of judges on relevant Congolese laws to help survivors; direct international funds to help survivors navigate the post-trial process; engagement and education of community chiefs within traditional justice mechanisms about survivors’ rights and the need to direct survivors to the formal court system; and the strengthening and enforcement of penitentiary systems so that sentences are upheld and punishment can be a deterrent to committing such crimes in the future.

Long-term recommendations from roundtable participants included the need to marshal political will, creating both a sovereign mineral fund and a victims’ fund, and reforming the legal sector by creating mixed chambers and revising key pieces of legislation. Significantly, long-term strategies to support reparations for survivors must also take into consideration collective community responses for the many survivors who never report their violation or never engage in the justice process.

These recommendations are by no means exhaustive, but showcase a desire and commitment from international actors to help survivors receive monetary judgments.

Reparations, both monetary and non-monetary, can provide emotional, psychological, physical, and economic relief for the pain, humiliation, trauma, and violence that sexual violence survivors have endured.

Enforcing monetary reparations justifies the hardship and difficulty of pursing justice in the first place for the survivors. The international community can help a sexual violence survivor move from a position of pain to power. The main question is whether we are willing to urge local governments and community leaders to make it happen.

Sexual violence survivors waiting to testify in a Congolese mobile court. Courtesy: Physicians for Human Rights

Sucharita S.K. Varanasi is a senior programme officer, at the Programme on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones with Physicians for Human Rights. She travels and works in DRC and Kenya.

A carpenter organises a load of mahogany seized by authorities in the Ciénaga de Zapata wetlands. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

How much does a forest cost? What’s the true economic value of an ocean? Can you pay for an alpine forest or a glacial meadow? And – more importantly – will such calculus save the planet, or subordinate a rapidly collapsing natural world to market forces?

On the last day of its World Summit of Legislators in Mexico City, the Global Legislators Organisation (or GLOBE International) released a landmark study Sunday on natural capital accounting, the first comprehensive report that compiles legal and policy efforts in 21 countries to calculate the monetary value of natural resources.

Defining ‘natural capital’ as encompassing everything from ecosystems and solar energy to mineral deposits and fossil fuels, the study recognises the highly degrading impact of human activity on the environment and underscores the “urgent need to develop effective methods and measures for natural capital accounting and to embed these within relevant legal and policy frameworks.”

“[T]he currency of life is life, not money.” – Vandana Shiva, director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology
“The report was conceived very much as a North-South learning partnership,” said lead science author Ben Milligan, a research fellow at the Centre for Law and Environment at the University College London (UCL).

“Equal voice was given to all inputs,” he told IPS, whether they came from the GLOBE International Secretariat or any of the 21 national stakeholders of the featured countries, which include five Asian nations, three European countries, seven African states and six case studies from the Americas.

What the authors found, according to Milligan, was a groundswell of political support for attempts to “recognise the fact that, in addition to nature’s important cultural, spiritual and aesthetic values, it also provides essential goods and services for our well-being and economic existence.”

The purpose of the study, he added, was to “provide a document that supported efforts in these countries to effect positive change.”

Indeed, some of the findings from the report are staggering. In Peru, for instance, where the focus of natural capital accounts is linked to economic valuation, the Ministry of Environment (MINAM) found that “the total value of selected ecosystem services in 2009 amount to 15.3 billion dollars.”

Broken down, this worked out to some 2.5 billion dollars from water and energy, eight billion from agriculture, forestry and livestock and 864 million from fisheries, while natural capital-based exports brought in nine million dollars in 2009.

“The vulnerability of ecosystems is of particular concern as ecosystem services are the productive base for industries such as fisheries, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism and pharmaceuticals,” the report noted, adding that the government already utilises various tools to measure the health of the natural environment, including an annual State of the Environment report produced by the National System for Environmental Information.

The Central Bank estimates that extractive industries contributed 45 percent of GDP in 2010, with the mining sector alone accounting for nearly 34 percent.

Keeping these statistics in mind, the government is now in the process of strengthening the sector’s legal and regulatory framework, conducting geological and mining research to expand its knowledge repository of the soil and subsoil, and performing environmental assessments of the impact of mining.

“We can’t sell life”

While proponents of natural capital accounting argue that the system will inform government behaviour and encourage the sustainable use of resources, some say that calculating ‘natural wealth’ is one step away from the complete commodification of the planet’s bounty.

“Evaluation of nature’s ecological services and functions can cut both ways,” Vandana Shiva, author, environmentalists and founder of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology in India, told IPS.

Understanding the value of stable and healthy ecosystems for local communities is “necessary and good,” she said. “But the minute you take a complex system with multiple functions and reduce it to a single function that can be appropriated and traded, you are already doing it wrong. After all, the currency of life is life, not money.”

Shiva pointed to the People’s Summit that took place alongside high-level negotiations at the 2012 environmental conference in Brazil (dubbed ‘Rio+20’), during which activists, indigenous groups and scientists rejected the idea of a green economy based on the financialisation of ecological services, fearing that such a scheme would ignore the root causes of environmental destruction.

The northern Indian state of Uttarakhand provides a stark example of this debate, since it recently became the first state in India to begin calculating its gross environmental product (GNP).

With its lush valleys and alpine meadows, this Himalayan state is one of the greenest in the country, retaining nearly 60 percent forest cover despite determined efforts to clear the land for development.

According to the GLOBE study, various reports have valued the land here at roughly five to seven billion dollars per annum. In a bid to ease restrictions on development, the Central Government now offers Uttarakhand a ‘green bonus’ of 0.3 billion dollars a year in exchange for its rich land.

Shiva says such a ‘bonus’ simply serves to distract from the more pressing issues of deforestation and glacial melting in Uttarakhand, which led to deadly floods last year. Even the Supreme Court of India has admitted that dams and hydroelectric projects in the state, which is infamous for its destructive development, aggravated the tragic disaster.

What this clearly shows, according to Shiva, is that “valuation is good if it’s giving you a red light to destruction. When valuation turns into a price, however, it [simply] gives the green light to destroy in smarter and cleverer ways.”

Others fear that natural capital accounting will trample upon the rights of indigenous people, many of whom see themselves as the last remaining custodians of the land.

According to Hugo Blanco, leader of the Campesino Confederation of Peru (CCP), tabulating a country’s ‘natural wealth’ will do little to correct the lopsided pyramid of power that places transnational corporations at the top and indigenous people and the environment on the bottom.

“Take, as one example, the Conga Project,” Blanco told IPS, referring to the massive gold and copper mining initiative in the Cajamarca Region of northern Peru that threatens to poison the waters of 40 high-altitude lagoons, which feed some 600 aquifers and provide drinking and irrigation water to thousands of campesinos before passing into five major rivers that eventually empty into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Even worse, Blanco says, is the impending threat of a dam that, if constructed, will flood the territories of hundreds of campesinos in order to provide electricity for the mine.

“This is an insane system,” he asserted, adding that such development projects highlight the Peruvian government’s true allegiance: not to the national laws protecting the rights of indigenous people or the environment, but to multinational corporations.

He believes Peru stands as a perfect example of the flaws inherent in a valuation system that attaches a price tag to nature.

It is one of the planet’s 10 ‘megadiverse‘ countries, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and hosts the world’s highest number of fish species (over 2,000), the second highest number of bird fauna species (1,736) and  the third highest number of amphibians (322).

“It would be a great stupidity to sell this richness, no matter how many billions of dollars you get,” Blanco insisted “We can’t sell life.”

(END)

By Miriam Gathigah
MEXICO CITY, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

Africa’s climate change legislative frameworks, though a step in the right direction, have come under fire for not being ambitious enough to meet the challenge of a changing climate.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an emerging global actor in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), has been criticised because its REDD+ projects are not supported by a legally binding framework, leaving forest communities in a legal void and vulnerable to economic exploitation.

But Jean-Claude Atningamu, a legislator in the DRC, admitted that while his country may have strategies and policies in place, a law on REDD+ is yet to be developed.

“We have just begun these processes and we are grappling with many challenges,” he told IPS.

He said that although indigenous communities were not benefiting from climate change financing, it was not because of a lack of political goodwill to do so.

“We do not have the full support from the international community who are not providing the funding necessary to help the people of the DRC meet the economic challenges that they are facing,” he said at the conclusion of the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) summit that was held in Mexico from Jun. 6 to 8.

He said that while the DRC has the second-largest forest cover in the world “we are yet to receive REDD+ financing.”

“We are expecting to receive the first 60 million dollars from REDD+. With our expansive forest cover we should be receiving at least one billion dollars in a year.

“We need to have mechanisms set up by parliament to help African countries to access REDD+ financing. Without access to this fund, we cannot implement the policies that we are discussing at this GLOBE Summit,” Atningamu added.

He pointed out that in Africa the forest was the wealth of the people, “we need it to feed our people, to get heat, to cook. You cannot tell your wife to stop using firewood and not provide an alternative source of energy.”

But a lack of access to climate financing is not the only issue of concern for the African block of legislators.

The resolutions agreed upon at the summit also raised concerns. These include an agreement to deliver robust legislation in support of sustainable development, particularly climate change, natural capital and forest/REDD as well as strengthening legislators´ capacity to effectively exercise their oversight responsibilities, especially over the executive.

Simon Asimah, chair of the African block at the summit and also GLOBE International vice-president for Africa, said that the resolutions were not comprehensive enough to meet the legislative gaps that Africa is facing.

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The Ghanaian legislator said that “a few clauses will be added to the final resolution to ensure that the African region the position of Africa in climate security is fully represented.”

These recommendations were accepted and clauses include the suggestion that all countries in Africa should have GLOBE chapters in their respective national legislatures and establish an African regional secretariat at GLOBE International to be founded in one of the countries of Africa. There are currently only  four globe international chapters in Africa – in Ghana, Nigeria, the DRC and South Africa,

This is key for coordination purposes, as well as to enhance the sharing of best practices on climate change mitigation and adaptation across Africa, according to the legislators.

Although the summit resolutions encouraged the development of legislation on natural capital, Asimah said that the African block had pushed to have “all countries, particularly those in Africa, to legislate on effective climate change laws, and in these laws, recognise and incorporate natural capital accounting concepts in accounting for their natural resources as part of their total national capital.”

Joyce Laboso, Kenya’s deputy speaker in the national assembly, also raised concerns over changing global perspectives and the impact they were having on Africa.

Laboso told IPS that fossil fuel is increasingly being discouraged at a time when many African countries such as Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Angola are discovering oil “and now we are being told that we are now moving into renewable energy that is going to be subsidised. How are we then going to achieve sustainable development if Africa cannot rely on its natural wealth?”

The Ghanaian delegation emphasised that developed nations such as the United States and emerging economies like China and Mexico were emitting the most carbon yet Africa was not expected to exploit its forests and become industrialised in the same way Brazil had.

Asimah said that Africa was also not being compensated enough or in some cases not at all for its efforts to keep people from exploiting the forests. “Africa must find a way to develop. But this is not a blame game, climate change is a global problem and it requires global solutions,” he said.

But Jacob F. Mudenda, speaker of Zimbabwe’s national assembly said: “Industrialised countries must submit themselves to climate change conventions, without which there will not be any global synergies.”

The African legislators from countries including, Nigeria, Cape Verde Islands, Sudan and Uganda, said that they were considering making significant financial demands on multinationals that were exploiting Africa’s natural wealth without impacting significantly on their GDP.

In Zimbabwe, Mudenda said that environment laws have now been anchored in the constitution as human rights “anyone who feels that they are being exploited can file a case at the constitutional courts.”

Mudenda further said that besides Zimbabwe, other countries like Botswana are learning from Norway and imposing revenue clauses on multinationals investing in their countries that they must improve the wealth of these African countries through a 51 to 49 percent benefit sharing ratio where the host takes the majority.

In spite of the concerns raised, African legislators have said that the summit was a step in the right direction, particularly as they continued to forge global partnerships on natural resources now that various global processes and goals were coming to an end, especially the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and new ones were beginning to take shape.

An aerial view of the Luwowo coltan mine, near Rubaya in the northeastern province of North Kivu, DRC. Credit: MONUSCO Photos/ CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jun 3 2014 (IPS)

For the first time, nearly 1,300 U.S. companies have filed reports on whether the products they manufacture or sell are made with minerals that have bankrolled conflict in the Great Lakes region of central Africa.

Monday was the deadline for the filings, the first concrete results of a provision passed in 2010 by the U.S. Congress aimed at helping to end the long-running civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Yet the law’s regulatory details have since been the target of sustained legal attacks from companies and lobby groups that have warned that fulfilling the reporting requirements would be onerous and even unconstitutional.

“In general we’re very disappointed with how vague many of the reports are, lacking much description on processes.” -- Carly Oboth, policy advisor at Global Witness
By Tuesday, however, it appeared that most companies expected to file a report on the so-called conflict minerals in their supply chains had done so. Those reports are now publicly available through the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the federal regulator tasked with implementing the rule, formally known as Section 1502.

“This is a historic day. Five years ago this issue wasn’t on anyone’s radar, and now consumers can look under the hood of what’s in a product,” Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy analyst at the Enough Project, a Washington-based watchdog group, told IPS.

“I think many people knew what companies like Apple, Intel or HP had been doing, as they have been pretty proactive on this issue. But no one has known what companies like Walmart or GM [General Motors] have been doing.”

In 2009, the U.N. Security Council formally recognised that revenues from minerals extraction were strengthening multiple armed groups operating in eastern DRC. The electronics industry has been one of the most significant users of these minerals, which include tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold.

Since then, Lezhnev reports, 95 mines in the DRC have been validated as “conflict free”, while two-thirds of the tin, tantalum and tungsten mines in the country’s east have been demilitarised. Gold remains a significant problem, however, and the Enough Project and others are calling for more concerted action in tightening sourcing decisions, particularly from the jewellery industry.

Box-checking?

Under the SEC guidelines, companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges must now file annual reports describing their efforts to discern whether their products use conflict minerals and, if so, their plans for stopping this practice. Several thousand U.S. companies have been identified as potentially – and likely unwittingly – selling products containing conflict minerals.

The consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton has stated that it has been involved in the manufacture of circuit boards, electrical assemblies and surveillance recorders containing conflict minerals. Many of these products, the company noted, were manufactured for the U.S. government.

Yet most companies have reported incomplete results. Microsoft, for instance, states that it “cannot exclude the possibility” that its products contain conflict minerals, but also that it hasn’t yet been able to obtain full sourcing information from its “extensive and complex” supply chain.

Advocacy groups are also concerned that most companies aren’t providing information on what follow-up actions they took after surveying their suppliers, if any.

“In general we’re very disappointed with how vague many of the reports are, lacking much description on processes,” Carly Oboth, a policy advisor at Global Witness, a watchdog group that has supported the conflict minerals regulations, told IPS.

“We’re concerned with how companies have come to their conflict minerals status decision, as many are claiming that they’re ‘conflict indeterminable’ or ‘conflict free’ but not showing how they arrived at that conclusion. This isn’t supposed to be a box-checking exercise, but rather about showing that you’re not sourcing from a conflict zone.”

Global Witness says the majority of the reports that have been filed thus far have been “inadequate”.

Conflict-free competition

For many companies faced with auditing their supply chains, a key chokepoint has been the metal smelters that turn raw resources into workable products. An industry-led initiative, the Conflict-Free Smelter Programme, has been particularly prominent, having so far certified around 40 percent of the world’s smelters, according to the Enough Project’s Lezhnev.

Yet Global Witness’s Oboth says many companies have simply ascertained whether their suppliers have this certification, and then gone no farther.

“Instead, what we want them to do – and what the [SEC] rule requires – is to follow up with the smelters,” she says. “Intel, for instance, has made site visits to smelters to check on their conflict minerals policy, to see how they’re actually identifying risk.”

Indeed, Intel, the microprocessor manufacturer, has in many regards been the most proactive company on the issue. In January, it unveiled the world’s first “conflict-free” product, and ahead of the recent filing deadline was the only company to offer a fully audited report on its supply chains.

Following an April court ruling that altered the original SEC rule, companies are no longer required to state whether or not a product is “conflict free” (though the court may rehear this case in coming months). Yet Intel, echoing advocacy groups and regulators, says such designations are important.

“One of our takeaways is around transparency. Although not required to disclose the status of our products, we believe this transparency shows our commitment on this issue to our customers and stakeholders,” Intel told IPS in a statement.

“We encourage other companies to also share their product conclusions as we all work towards validating our products as DRC conflict free. Product conclusions provide a useful and transparent method to communicate the progress of our due diligence efforts.”

Already the presence of a single conflict-free product on the market has spurred competition, and a similar dynamic is expected to result from Monday’s public filings.

“We’re already seeing other companies racing to make the next conflict-free product, and we’re encouraging consumers to urge the largest aerospace and automotive companies to take part,” Lezhnev stated.

“Intel’s step is a good one, but there are companies out there that are far bigger. For instance, when is Boeing or GE going to make the next conflict-free product?”

(END)